Ok, alittle background, this is a "fish" story

when i was in jr. highschool and highschool i had a couple fish tanks and i enjoyed them but i guess i had other hobbies that pushed them out of the way, 10-15 years later i decided to get a fish tank, well my brother has always had tanks and he decided to help me out alittle. I wanted fresh water fish, and my brother was switching over to salt water, Troyboy on the forum already gave my brother a 265 gallon salt water tank but his house cannot support the weight of the tank right now (we are working on that) so i bought my brother a 110 gallon salt water tank and he gave me his 125 gallon fresh water tank, he also gave me the pumps and heaters that i would need and natural rock.

So i setup this tank and put everything in it and let it sit with nothing but the plants in it for about 3 days, then i put a pleco and a pictus catfish in the tank

after about 24 hours i noticed i couldnt find the pleco anymore, my brother told me to check all around the tank, low and behold i found it dried out behind the tank, it jumped out and died, i have a complete glass hood on the tank and there is only enough room for the pumps to fit in, so about 2" of the back of the tank is exposed. The pleco died, luckily petsmart has a 14 day return policy so i returned the dried corpse to the petstore they gave me store credit for the pleco so i got TWO highfinned pleco's and two more pictus catfish.

i let those fish have fun in the tank for 3-4 days then i decided i wanted to put some more fish in the tank, i went to the local pet store and got 3 firemouth cichlids, two jack dempsy's two black convicts and two sevani cichlids and one Medium sized tiger pleco about 7" long.

fast forward about 6 days, i notice the catfish have white spots starting to form on them, turns out its ICH which is a disease that fish get, i got medicine for them and started doing water changes on the tank, about 25% every 3 days, well after 2 days the sevani cichlids started showing a couple white spots, so my brother comes up and tells me to turn the heat on the tank up, i turned it up to about 83* this seemed to help the sevani cichlids, but one by one the pictus catfish died, about 24 hours apart each, so now thats 4 fish that have died in my tank so far and this was about a week ago, well today i couldnt find my 7" long pleco at first i just figured he was in one of the rock caves or possibly my large piece of driftwood, well i couldnt find him all day and he's normally a fairly active fish, tonight i found him behind the tank dried out..... so in less than 3 weeks ive lost 5 fish in my tank and my sevani cichlids still show some minor signs of ICH that im treating...

to make matters worse i setup a 29 gallon tank in my living room about a week ago, it has live plants and clay type gravel so the plants have some form of soil to grow in, i figured my other fish would need live food every once in a while so i put 2 dozen guppys in the tank and two fancy guppys, i also figured that after a couple months they would have many babys and i could just breed the food supply

well it turns out the feeder guppys that i got had a fungus called tail rot, about 2/3s or more of them have died in the last 3 days, luckily the fancy guppy and some of the normal guppys had babys so i have about 3 dozen babys in the tank, but the loss of about 20 or so guppys and 5 other fish that cost a bit more than mere feeder guppys.

i must be doing something wrong, i guess i should just be happy that i have some baby guppys and the rest of my cichlids are doing fine. i have meds in the large tank for the ich which all those fish seem healthy and active, and i have meds in the other tank for tail/fin rot.

i sure hope it gets easier over time.......

ill try to post some pictures of my tanks later.

matthew

Gosh Matt (I think). I can be of no help. Man, sorry for your troubles. I have always wanted a big fish tank mounted in-wall, between two rooms, visible in each.
You are not doing nothing wrong. You are learning.
Gosh, I am too ignorant to help. I do remember that you do have to wash the bottom gravel.
Best of luck and keep at it. A fish tank is every bit as beautiful as nice plants.

The only problem I had with owning over 12 fish, some tend to eat each other! I have had 7 Pirahna's, and three times I paired them up from the start and one ate the other. Hehehehe! Damn cannibals!!

Ahhh Mr. Pacu, even with bigger stature comes death for you.


Oh and Mr. Pirahna, you had supper tonight, I hope it was tasty!

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'87 GT *Show winning* sold
'89 BMW 325I Zinnoberrot, 5-spd Stock
'96 BMW M3 Cosmos sold

quote Originally posted by cliffw: You are not doing nothing wrong. You are learning.

Yep. It takes a little time to get the hang of things.

At least you're learning the smart way, and starting off with a fresh water setup. We've seen people just jump right into salt water tanks, and learning with those is a whole lot more expensive. We've had a few fresh water tanks ourselves, but never any saltwater tanks. We'll most likely try a salt water setup once we buy a house, and know that we're not going to need to tear the setup down to move again.

im just glad i dont have anything expensive like flowerhorns or zebra pleco's

or freshwater stingrays, i always wanted those, but they seem to be too expensive.

matthew

This is why I gave up on fish after my girl accidentally killed the one fish that lived for 7 years ( see threw fish with green high lights). Its just to finiky at times. If they aren't eating each other they would just die off for no reason.

You might start buying your fish from these guys:
http://www.liveaquaria.com/

I never have any luck with something I bought from a department store, and some of the locally owned pet stores are horrid.

I have a salt water tank and I buy all my stuff from them. They quarantine all their fish and have a "arrive alive stay alive for 14 days" warranty.

Fish are a PITA.

ammonia, PH, ICH, tail rot!

You need a PhD in marine aquatics to keep anything alive other than a gold fish.

Those gold fish are hardy.......

Well i went to the local pet store today, found out that the supplier of the guppies had sent them guppys with fin/tail rot, so i dont feel so bad about my guppies having fin/tail rot now cause it wasnt my fault.

so now the supplier sent him something called "platties" at the same cost as the guppys, they are similar to guppys but about twice the size.

right now i still have one of the fancy guppys in the tank (the adult male) and the female had a bunch of fancy guppy babys before she died, so i have about 2-3 dozen babys that dont seem to be effected by the disease, and only two adults left that seem to be carrying it, if it were not for the fact both of them are ready to give birth any day, id flush them.

my cichlids seem to be doing well, the ich is clearing up on them real well, i did forget to mention in my original story that i had something called a "mudpuppy" in the tank with the cichlids, i thought it climbed out but it showed back up the other day after the catfish left the tank, it died 2-3 days later i think it starved itself, i did feed it insects and bugs, and bloodworms but i dont think it ate any of them.


matthew

ich is commonly a sign of stress. most likely due to adding so many new fish at once. all of these new fish are looking for their "turf" at the same time, plus being introduced all at once. raising the heat will kill ich. i like to do that before adding any chemicals. platys are live bearers like guppies. they won't interbreed but mollies and guppies will. platys will interbreed with swordtails (another live bearer). sounds like you are setting up a semi agressive tank. use a lot of rock to for caves for them to hide in. if you go with live plants, get 3-4 watts per gallon of light and they'll grow great! you also havn't gone through a cycle in three days of adding fish. those fish will likely die and start your cycle with needed bacteria. some aquariums take weeks to complete a cycle. some take months. mine took about two weeks in my 75 gallon. you just watch the nitrites. they will spike way up, then fall back down. when they reach 0, you've cycled. at that point, your nitrates are consuming the nitrites. which is good. check out aquaria central forum. great help from most of those guys. oh...and those chain pet stores can be bad. they typically have some salt in their tanks even with fresh water fish. you get them home and don't aclimate them slowly, they get shocked and die or develop ich. most of them are known for using cyanide to catch the fish from the farms or wild. cyanide stuns them and makes them easier to catch in masses. also bad for the fish. hope that sheds a little light on something....good luck with the new underwater world.