Constant fish deaths

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Is my gourami possibly bullying my new fish to death?

Hi there, I'm new to the fishlore world and have joined as I'm having trouble keeping any NEW fish that I add to my aquarium alive. All my existing fish are doing really well and are thriving but for some reason everytime I add new fish they all pass, normally within a week or two. I figured it's probably easiest to just fill in the emergency template so here goes.
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Tank
What is the water volume of the tank? 29g
How long has the tank been running? 3 months
Does it have a filter? Yes
Does it have a heater? Yes
What is the water temperature? 77f
What is the entire stocking of this tank? (Please list all fish and inverts.) 1 Male dwarf gourami, 13 neon tetras, 3 corydoras (I know I need more but the last one I added didn't survive). These are all my existing fish there is also currently 1 guppy (all that survived from the 4 I got), and 2 patties (one heavily pregnant).

Maintenance
How often and how much of the water do you change? A 20% water change every weekend and the occasional 10% water change during the week if needed.
What do you use to treat your water? Prime water conditioner
Do you vacuum the substrate or just the water? Vaccum every second week.

*Parameters - Very Important
Did you cycle your tank before adding fish? I used goldfish during my cycle but it was completed when I started the freshwater setup.
What do you use to test the water? API master test kit.
What are your parameters? We need to know the exact numbers, not just “fine” or “safe”.
Ammonia:0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate: 7 ppm roughly
pH: 7.2
Tested this morning (have been testing everytime I have a fish death and results have pretty much been the same)

Feeding
How often do you feed your fish? Once or twice a day.
How much do you feed your fish? Just a pinch of tropical flakes/ micro pellets and half a shrimp wafer.
What brand of food do you feed your fish? NutriDiet tropical flakes, Delta shrimp wafers and API tropical micro pellets for something different.
Do you feed frozen or freeze-dried foods? Frozen bloodworm once or twice a week.

Illness & Symptoms
In a few words, can you explain the symptoms? Fish sit off in the corner of the tank not eating. The guppies in particular start to swim funky, almost disorientedly in the days before they pass.
Have you started any treatment for the illness? No
Was your fish physically ill or injured upon purchase? No

Explain your emergency situation in detail. (Please give a clear explanation of what is going on, include details from the beginning of the illness leading up to now)

So everytime I add new fish to my established aquarium they're always dying within a week or so. Some show symptoms but others don't. The guppy males all seemed to get disoriented and swam around really oddly, they'd kind of float around a bit and then swim really erratically but then just stop again. The platty that died didn't show any symptoms, just woke up to it dead with no injuries but it hadn't been eating that I saw (was swimming around seemingly fine though). Corydora and bristlenose just sat in the corner and found them dead a week later. This has been an ongoing issue really and not just something that's happened in the last day or so but rather over a month now. I'm really wrapping my brain as to what could be causing this and the only thing I can think is that maybe my dwarf gourami isn't letting the newcomers eat? I see him chasing them a little bit but I never see him full on go them or really keep them away from the food.
 

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What process do you use to add new fish? Are all the fish from the same store? Which fish died?
 

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  • Thread Starter
  • #3
I acclimate them for at minimum an hour (shortest time I've done) but generally around the 2-3 hours by floating the bag to let it come to temp and then gradually adding water from the tank to the bag.

No the fish are not all from the same place. I've lost over 8 guppies, 3 from one chain store, 2 from another chain store and 3 from my lfs. Have lost a platty that was given to me from a local breeder. Bristlenose from my lfs and Corydora from a chain store (I think this one was stressed to the point it poisoned itself as the person catching was incredibly inexperienced and chased it around and around for ages before manhandling into the bag).
 
You may need to wait longer to add new fish?
You may have some sort of contaminite in the tank or filter.

I recently watched a video That another user from this site posted. and it made scientific sense and it said that bag acclimation is not ideal. I have bag acclimated for 20 years, but I think I might switch to acclimating in a wide open bucket. I would never plop and drop, my ph is pretty much never the same as the petstores.
 
how did they die? I don't think fish can just die without any physical damage just from some abuse from another fish. it probably is a sickness, or what Noroomforshoe is saying
 
  • Thread Starter
  • #6
Thank you, I'm starting to wonder if it was the acclimation process myself. Will try and improve that. The dead guppies and platy I usually just find floating at the top where my filter intake is so I'm not really sure how they die. I thought maybe the gourami was just stopping them from getting to the food and they were starving to death? I'm honestly not too sure.
 
Sounds like a disease of some sort, is it possible for you to upload a video of them?
Not eating and swimming funky could be gill flukes or some sort of internal issue
 
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