All my tetras died

[mlefev]

Well after I lost my one tetra, I waited awhile. The other two looked fine, so I got 2 new ones from the store. I think I bought the new ones about 10 days ago at the most.

I've been sick and just feeding them this weekend. They all seemed fine. I woke up this morning to two dead in the exact same spot and the other 2 apparently had been eaten by something because I can't find them.

Do you think the 2 new guys had a disease? I thought it was odd that both I could find were in the same spot.

Anyway, any suggestions of what may have killed them would be good. Ph 7.5, Nitrates .03, Ammonia 0 (fish listed in siggy)

[Osiris]

How old is the tank?

[mlefev]

It's been up since July. I had had it running since November of last year, but when I was moving, I had to pretty well cycle it again, since I changed substrate, etc.

My nitrates have been running at .03 or less steadily since september, and ammonia has been at 0 for a long time.

[mlefev]

Anyone have any ideas?

[mrmoby]

I wish I knew......I lost 10 in the last week.

[MyraVan]

Originally Posted by mlefev

My nitrates have been running at .03 or less steadily since september, and ammonia has been at 0 for a long time.

I think you're confusing nitrAte and nitrIte. The nitrogen cycle goes
ammonia -> nitrite -> nitrate
The first two are really bad for your fish and you shouldn't have any, the last one isn't too bad so up to about 40ppm is fine (you get rid of nitrate by water changes, at least most people do; we have 40ppm nitrate in the tap water, so water changes don't do much for me!). I think you mean that you have .03ppm nitrite, and aren't giving the nitrate reading.

Actually, I'm astonished your testkit can give a reading of .03 nitrite. My testkit (the common API one) goes from 0ppm right up to 0.25 as the next step up. Perhaps you're misreading it, or misplacing the decimal point? Perhaps you really have 0.3ppm nitrite? If so, that *is* bad, and indicates that something isn't quite right with your tank.

Even if everything were perfect with your tank, I would still recommend against adding anything to the tank. The clown pleco is a very messy fish, and with it, the snails, your danios, and the platies, I think you have more than enough already. If you really must add something, wait until your tank has scompletely stabilized (that is, ammonia and nitrite both exactly 0), and add one zebra danio.

[mlefev]

Ok I looked at the kit again. it is nitrite. I was sick all this week so I didn't do my regular water change. It's been at 0 for months, though, and on the test kit, the color is more then the <.3 but more than 0 at the moment. Even at that, I can't imagine that the chemicals are that out of kilter. Still, though. I'm going to keep it running with just the ones I have and maybe add a danio every 3 weeks or so until I get a few more fish in there. I'm going to start aggressively getting rid of those snails. they're running me bonkers.

You're right about the reading of the decimal. It's under the .3 but I was rounding up since it is above 0. It's odd because it had been at 0 for weeks and weeks and weeks, but then it spiked. I guess I'll do partial water change every other day until it balances back out.

AHA...brainstorm...I do know what I did actually. I had an old filter bag that I took out of the last cartridge change and had sitting in the tank. I pulled it out about a week ago and that's when I started noticing nitrItes. I bet that messed up the balance.

I have a sand substrate, but is there anything else I can place in the tank, like porous rock or something that would hold extra bacteria?