I'm having problems adding new fish to my 30 gallon freshwater tank. (I
typically keep guppies and neon tetras in my tank with a pleco or two).
All the water levels are fine, temp is fine, etc. (ph is actually a little
high at 7.6, but that doesn't seem to be a problem). My tank can go for
months with no problems. The fish will be healthy, the tank is kept clean
through water changes, etc.
THEN
I can introduce a couple of fish to the tank (from either of two pet
stores
in my area -- one a very large national chain -- the other a local mom &
pop
outfit). I always end up with a diseased tank with many fish dying off in
the process.
This happened about 8 or 10 months ago and I lost all of my fish except
about 6 or 7 baby guppies and one neon tetra. I was so frustrated that I
didn't add any new fish. Felt sorry for the lonely tetra, but he seemed
to
be OK even without some buddies to school with - in fact he got pretty
darn
big. The guppies eventually grew to full adult size and were quite nice.
I finally decided to give the tetra some playmates and added new ones to
the
tank. Within a few days, my entire tank except one pleco was dead. There
were no signs of disease and no warning of any kind. The fish would look
fine before going to bed and by morning, I'd find 2 or 3 floaters. I did
not add the water from the pet store to the tank. After properly
acclimating the fish to the new water (by adding small amounts of water
from
my tank to their bag over a period of about 30 minutes), I netted them
into
the tank rather than just pouring them in.
Actually, in the 3 or 4 years I've had my tank, this has been a chronic
problem -- usually I'd lose a few fish -- but this time it was really
severe
and I'm royally pissed about it.
Is there some preventative measure I should take when adding fish? I'm
thinking of treating the tank for disease when I add new fish just as a
preventative measure, but until I know what causes such a quick death with
no warning signs, I really don't know what to treat it for.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.
-Tim
|
