Schmidty

Well, I did a 20% water change two nights ago and the next morning had two dead fish (male and female swordtail). Now this morning, I have another female swordtail that is missing and my ammonia level is up a bit. Can it be that the water change hurt my tank? Am I spiraling into anther cycle or a mini-cycle? I don't understand what happened and am frustrated with my tank right now! I thought regular water changes were GOOD for the tank, not bad!!!

At least there is this good news, all my platies are hanging in there!

Chief_waterchanger

Ammonia levels are up, more than likely, due to the dead fish beginning to decay.

As far as the waterchange goes:

Did you put the same temperature of water back into the tank as was taken out?
What method of putting water back in do you use? (python, buckets, bowls, etc)?
Are you on well-water or a municipality?
Did you treat the water if you are on a municipality?

I would suggest testing your tap water. It is quite common for ammonia to be present in the tap water for municipality users.

sgould

Also...did you expose your filter media to any untreated tap water during the change?

Schmidty

The temperature was very similar to what was in the tank.
I used a bucket to transfer the water back into the tank.
The water is from a well but goes through a softener before I use it. I tested it before I started the tank and everything was ok.
The filter was not exposed to the tap water until after it was already in the tank.
I really don't know what to make of it. I am just going to let my tank sit for a bit and see if things mellow out or if there are more problems. As far as I can tell, the other fish are doing well.
Here's hoping everything stabalizes!

Peterpiper

Is the bucket only used for water changes? and not used for anything else?

Schmidty

Correct, the bucket is ONLY used for water changes. I bought two buckets for fish tank use only.

On a brighter note, I recently became a fish bum, I guess!!! WOO-HOO!

Time to celebrate that accomplishment.....

Chief_waterchanger

If there is some way you could get the well water before it goes through the softener that would definately help.

The softener replaces your ions in the water that would make the water hard, such as calcium, with sodium, which is more water soluable which makes the water softer. That inturn increases the salinity of the water while lowering the hardness. Salinity is the amount of dissolved salt in the water. Salt in your freshwater tanks aggitates scaled fish's flesh, increasing slime coat production (kinda like scabs cover cuts... so it would be like scratching yourself until your flesh scabs over.) The reason I explained slime coat usage is because some people swear that one must add salt to some freshwater tanks to increase slime coat production to prevent illness... that is like making yourself scab over to prevent infection.. Also as far as salinity goes for freshwater fish: non-scaled fish such as plecostomus and corydoras will mimic a human's seasonal allergies. Pollen causes humans that have allergy problems to increase mucous production in our nose, salt does that to their entire body. It is an irritant, it isn't going to kill them directly, but will be very aggrivating.

All that being said:

The added salinity aggrivates the fish which inturn makes them more vulnerable to illness, parasite, and bacteria, which then with a weakened and sickened fish you get death as a possibility.

Hope the long-winded response makes sense.

Schmidty

Are you not, in fact, actually the...one and only...Sherlock Holmes??

TheEssigs

I was curious... what water conditioner do you use when changing your water? Prime? API Stress Coat?

The reason I ask is that I used Stress coat since the onset of my tanks and all was well, but having heard such rave reviews about Prime I switched and oddly I noticed that the fish began to become more ill more frequently. So I switched back, and for whatever the reason... I have less sickness...

Maybe a coinsidence, maybe not... just a thought.