# Can anyone advise me really quickly :(



## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Long story short, my two neons died last night. I did a two third water change this morning. The rosy barb suddenly started gasping at the top of the tank and died shortly afterwards. (only had three fish) I took a water sample in to the pet store, which tested fine so the aquarium man gave me advice on cleaning filter, feeding etc and I bought some more fish. They have been in the tank for about two hours, they were all swimming at the top, i've lost two already. What could be wrong and what can I do? I think the model of the tank is FRF-555, it's about 25l. I've googled and looked at the user manual online, can't see anything wrong.


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## Quinzell (Mar 14, 2011)

Did you acclimate the fish or just add them? If you just added them, fish can go into shock.

Gasping at the surface can be a sign of low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water. What do you have for surface agitation? What filter do you have? What is the temperature of the water?

Where do you have the tank? If it is open top do you have any air fresheners or work going on in the house using chemicals/paint, etc.


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## cats galore (Jul 17, 2012)

how long has your tank been set up. neons are not very good in new setups so it may be that. 25l is a small tank and the smaller the tank the more difficult it is to keep the water in decent condition. also is your heater working. maybe you have wrong temperature. it is very easily overlooked if the heater fails. you automatically think it is the water but it could be the temperature.


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## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Thanks for replies, the fish were acclimatised (sp)? The tank has been set up for about a year. We'd had the rosy barb for about two years and the neons for about 9 months. Heater seems to be working fine (temp is 26), as does the filter. I'm afraid I can't tell you what kind of filter we have...it came with the tank, model number above. We've lost another one now  Something is really wrong here and I can't figure it out.


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## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Sorry, forgot to add, tank is closed, nothing going on with chemicals in the house...


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## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Two left now, my daughter is gutted...can I do anything?


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## Angelfish2 (Jun 26, 2012)

Okay, this happened to my 20, I started off with a 3 neons, 4 platies, a betta, and a pleco, at the end the pleco, 2 platies, and the betta survived. How did I help. Well I put them in my medication tank over night. (with no actual medication, just water and a heater. I did it so i could empty out my WHOLE tank and clean everything. The heater, filter, gravel, decor, and the tank glass. I believed there could have been a disease. I fulled it back with water, and put the fish back in after 24 hours. Everything was fine after.


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## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Thanks for reply angelfish2, I don't have a spare tank though and I lost them all unfortunately. I couldn't see any obvious problems but I called the aquarium place since and they said they'll have a look at the filter for me if I drop it in.

If all is fine with that, what's the best thing to do?

Clean whole tank and treat as new, fishless cycling etc?

It's a mystery, everything appeared to be working fine, water tested fine...but then, i'm no expert.


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## DoodlesRule (Jul 7, 2011)

Where did you get the fish from & how far away is the store from you home? If you have different water paramaters, PH hardness etc then that can be an issue. Have you added anything new like stones, decorative things


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## Angelfish2 (Jun 26, 2012)

id clean the whole tank, and start a fishless cycle. After 3 days, get a few zebra danios to help with the cycling. SCRUB everything. Filter, heater, the rocks, decor, whole tank, everything. but make sure you don't use any soap, or chemical sponges. when i cleaned my tank, my mom had bought a recycled sponge that had no chemicals, and was never used. haha. You don't need a spare tank. You could have used a glass jar that's a good size. They are only staying there for 24 hours anyways.


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## magpie (Jan 3, 2009)

If you have no fish left then I'd probably agree with cleaning out the tank and doing a complete fishless cycle. Please don't cycle the tank with fish though, especially danios as they are far to active for such a small tank, and it's cruel to use fish to cycle a tank anyway.


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## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Thanks, pet store is about a ten min drive so not very far doodles and they have a good reputation for taking care of what they sell (which is why I went there, the local pet store is rubbish!). 

But the three fish that died, i'd had for a while. I didn't do anything differently with the tank at all. No new decorations, no new fish, closed tank, nothing chemical used in the house The neons died first so I did the 2/3 water change when I got them out, just couldn't understand why they'd gone. The next day the rosy barb died which is when I took the water sample to be tested.

It tested fine which is why I bought the new fish. I had told my daughter there was no way i'd get any more if there was something wrong (and I can't imagine the pet store would sell them to me anyway, I hope they wouldn't!).

I'm taking the pump/filter to be looked at when I can get up there (I don't drive and it's in the sticks even though it's not far, there's not really any buses).

I will start again from scratch I think then, if the pump/filter is fine. Is there any way I can test the lot myself with some kind of kit because I really don't want to buy any more fish and have them die. They aren't a hobby to us, they're pets and my daughter gets really attached to them. Got to admit, I feel pretty bad about them dying too.


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## kiara (Jun 2, 2009)

hi,

if you could get the actual reading of yr tank water that would be great. the fish shop saying the water is fine is not really good enough.

first thing that comes to mind is ammonia or nitrIte poisoning.

you need to know what your ammonia, nitrAte and nitrIte is.

you can get a master test kit from eBay, fish shops and pets at home. there around £20-£30. you need a liquid test kit. the dip test strips are not reliable.

how did you clean your filter and did you add water conditioner to remove chlorine?


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## sarah70 (Feb 12, 2011)

Hi Kiara,

Would ammonia, nitrate and nitrite not show up on the tests the aqarium place did then? If not, what do they test for? (No sarcasm intended at all genuine question!) I just assumed those tests covered everything needed? I didn't notice him using strips of any kind, just mixing things in little containers although I didn't pay much attention to the actual process. When he said the results were fine I trusted that.

Filter cleaned in water taken from tank, water conditioner added.

I never realised fish were so hard to keep! When I was a child I had tropicals in unheated fish bowl type things in a small room where our boiler was and they lived a long time, they had no filters and the water was never tested, seems unbelievable now (it was the 80's and I knew no better)!

My daughter is nagging me to do something with the tank, it's no problem to scrub the lot and start again but I want to make sure i'm doing the right thing?


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