"Timothy E. Raborn" wrote...
> 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
use a quarentine tank(*) and quarentine the fish for about two weeks
before
introducing them to the main tank.
*usually a ten gallon works fine and is cheap, easy to set up and clean,
and
stows away farily easily. you can in most cases get away with setting it
up
the day before with a handfull of substrate (or better yet, filter
material)
and water from your main tank.
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