Deepdownunder

Hi all,
I have a 29 gallon freshwater tank that has been running since the first week of the year, and everything has been running smoothly until the past week. I had one of my Emerald Cory's die on me, and now two of my 6 Platy's have died. Heres how everything happend:

I originally had 3 Cory's and 3 Serpae (Red) Tetras living in my tank peacefully for a couple months. Then last week one of my Cory's mysteriously died. So I went to my local pet store and talked to the guy, he told me to test my water. I did so, and all of my levels looked normal (according the test strip my nitrate is 41, nitrite .2, Hardness 130, alkalinity 0, and pH 6.2). So after waiting a couple days and testing another time, I went out and decided to buy some Platy's ( I bought 4 females and two males). Well after their third or fourth day in the tank I find two of the females laying on the bottom of the tank dead. I didnt find any marks on them to suggest they were bullied. Any ideas? What should i do??!

Thanks...

Gunnie

I'm sorry you are having fish problems. It looks like your tank is having a mini cycle. Your nitrates are high, so my first suggestion would be to do a water change to get those down. What is your ammonia reading?

sgould

Did you test for ammonia as well? How often are you changing water, and how much? The fact that you have nitrite in there at all is not normal and would indicate that all is not well with your cycle. Your nitrate readings are getting high as well. Also, I would not trust test strip results...too many people have had issues with them providing significantly inaccurate results.

I would suggest doing the following:

1) Do a 50% water change as soon as you can. Vacume your gravel while you are at it. Many, many problems are sooner or later going to trace back to water quality, so this will buy you
some time and address the most likely culprit.
2) Wait a few hours after the water change and then re-test your water parameters, if at all possible using a liquid test kit.
This is a good one, widely used: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...&N=2004+114130
3) Be sure to test for ammonia as well as nitrite and nitrate.

Let us know the results, and hopefully we can provide some possible answers for you.

Jim

sgould and Gunnie are right, sounds like an ammonia spike. do what sgould said and post your results ASAP and we'll try and help ya out

COBettaCouple

have the fish you've lost had red or purple gills? did they go to the surface a lot or stay at the surface? Did anything get added or taken out of the tank around the time the fish started to die?

we definitely agree with getting an API master FW kit.. it's easy and accurate.