new silver dollars dead within hours - why?

[tukituki]

we have a tank about a metre wide, currently with some neons, 2 young angel fish, a few siamese fighters, a few guppies and some catfish. today we bought 3 small silver dollars from a pet shop. we settled them in our tank the usual way, floating bag on top for 20-30mins, adding some of our tank water to the bag for 10mins or so, then released them into the tank. i noticed at this point that one was really badly fin nipped. now a couple of hours later one is on the top of the tank on its side, but still alive, and the other 2 are dead. we have had fish for years and saw something similar a couple of years ago when we moved some silver dollars (that were much bigger than these ones) to a different tank, they went on their sides and seemed ill for a while but then came right, perhaps one died that time i'm not sure. i assume that silver dollars are quite sensitive. what could be the problem here?

[LYNDYLOO]

A few Siamese Fighters?? (Are these all Females)

Have your checked your Water Parameters??

When did you do your Last Water Change??

Some Fish do this, but they should come right once they have been introduced them into the Tank.

[Stella]

1: water quality? Most likely.

2: Maybe: they were in the bags swimming about in their own waste for quite a while. Floating the bag then warms it all up nicely, increasing the ammonia toxicity. A better option is to settle the bag into a large bowl (to keep it upright) and use a bit of airline to slowly siphon tank water into the bag, thus diluting the bag water, keeping them warm and getting them very slowly introduced to tank water. After 20-30 minutes net them out and put them in the tank.

Of course you KNOW you should quarantine EVERYTHING before it goes in your tank! Massive disease risk even if the pet shop fish 'look' healthy.

[livingart]

may have been too much difference in water parameters

i now put bag of fish in a bucket and slowly introduce water from the tank into the bucket over a long time period, then introduce fish into tank

stella beat me to it

[tukituki]

our siamese fighters aren't quite normal as we have 2 males and 2 females in the same tank. they all get on fine. this was a temporary measure and there will be just the young male in the tank, and one other female any day now.

last water change was about a week ago. i've never experienced anything like this with new fish over the years. thanks for the tips for introducing fish to new tank.

[jc360]

When was the last time a fish died in the tank???

go back and explain to the retailer what happened then report their response back here please.

[phoenix44]

when I get new fish, I usually acclimatise them over half an hour. when i get fish that are rarer, it is common practise to acclimatise them over a few hours.

Just as stella said, I too use a bucket, dump the fish in, add water from my tank with a hose, leave them be in there for as long as i can be bothered.

[tukituki]

we haven't had any fish die for a while now, but probably get a few each year, like 4-5 perhaps at the most. i will call them tomorrow and see what they have to say and let you know.

[phoenix44]

do they have any whitish marks like fraying almost on them?

(or did you notice that on the bodies?_)

[tukituki]

i've just been looking at the corpses of the 2 and no white marks as far as i can see. as i said before one was really badly fin nipped, so a bulk of this fish's fins are gone. the other looks normal. what would a white fraying apperance imply?

[phoenix44]

fraying is what sometimes happens if the fish were introduced into water that was very different to what they are used to. it usually signifies a drastic change, like from say pH 7 to 55 or so

[tukituki]

the last one has died now too. it is very sad. has any one else experienced silver dollars being ultra sensitive to changes in water condition etc?

[LYNDYLOO]

Did you contact the Petshop where you got them from??

[Scottie841]

like from say pH 7 to 55 or so

PH 55 wow what fish do you have that can live in that? When did the scale start going past 14?

If is had lost of its fins it might have been stressed from life at the LFS and the move was enought to finnish it off

[phoenix44]

5.5 lol

[tukituki]

i took a water sample and the fish back to the shop we got them from, they were really kind. they tested our water and to my horror the ammonia level was high. nitrites not too bad, and pH a little low. so lots of frequent water changes now. how often should i be doing them? i think over feeding is the culprit as we have a lot less fish now, and my other half seems to forget this sometimes! we want to get the water levels good asap so the other fish don't suffer.

[LYNDYLOO]

Ohhh NO

Ammonia should be at all times 0

Ph really doen't matter so much about this

Nitrates shouldn't be any higher than 40

Nitrites should also be 0

I would be doing say, 40% every morning and every night, need to get the Ammonia back down to 0,otherwise you will have more Fishy's Die.

How often were you doing Water Changes and how often are you testing your Water??

I wouldn't be adding anymore Fish untill everything is back to where it should be.

[tukituki]

i think i got my nitrites and nitrates mixed up! the test that was done was really low though and not considered too bad.

yes no more fish until the ammonia is gone. the person in the shop said not to do too frequent water changes as it will upset the fish. they said every 2-3 days. we usually do our water changes once a fortnight. we have never ever had this problem before in all the years we have kept fish. we also have never used a testing kit after advice from an aquarium specialist where we used to live.

we have done a water change today of 40%, the next one we were going to do sunday or monday...

[Stella]

40% is probably a bit high for this situation.

You basically did what your petshop person warned you not to: too sudden a change will affect the fish - even going from a bad situation to a 'better' one.

10% every day for a while makes sense to me. Gradually even things out then get them healthy again, without shocking the fish too badly.

If your tank is healthy you can do big, regular waterchanges quite safely, as the change for the fish isn't so great. If the tank is unhealthy, little regular ones are better than bigger irregular ones.

Others may recommend something different?

[sharn]

I agree with Stella. When your ammonia is high from building up over time usually the ph is quite low too. Ammonia is less toxic in lower ph's. If you are to go and do a big waterchange and your tap water has a higher ph value you will remove some ammonia but you will also up the ph which makes the remaining ammonia more toxic, this could result in another fish die off. Lots of little ones IMO. Oh, as a side note, IME silver dollars are wierd fish, mine 'nearly died' when I purchased mine and every time they moved tank they proceeded to nearly die again :lol: They were just plain woosy and another lot I know will lie on their sides on the bottom for several hours after each water change :-?

[Discusguru]

You can do a 100% waterchange if you want PROVIDED the ph of the new water is the same as the water you're replacing. That's where the test kit comes into play.

ron

[tukituki]

silver dollars must be quite sensitve if they get quite woozey eh!

i do not have a test kit so 100% not possible. i think we will go with about 30% every 2nd day unless i am persuaded otherwise. we are on rain water. cheers.

[Stella]

You can do a 100% waterchange if you want PROVIDED the ph of the new water is the same as the water you're replacing. That's where the test kit comes into play.

Sounds like a great way to kill them all when the tank is so sick!

I would know do that if I knew the aquarium water was awesomely fabulously healthy. (Mine regularly get 40% changes, or more depending)

Why is the pH the crucial factor? It that about the ammonia thing like Sharn said? If so I guess that would make bit of a difference.... but hard to predict the outcome.

[LYNDYLOO]

Think you will find it's more to do with the Difference in the PH, rather than the Ammonia.

If you put a Fish into Water that is a very different PH level to what they have been in, they will get PH Burn, their Fins will turn White and Basically fall off in time then Regrow.

I would highly recommend Discusguru's advice, do 100% Water Change, but make sure the new Water you are replacing the Old with is in a similar PH range to the Water that was already in the Tank.

I would also highly recommend you get your self a Test Kit, all Fish Keepers should have one of these, far easier to Test the Water yourself rather than having to run to the Petshop to get it tested.

[tukituki]

we got a testing kit today as we really want to sort out the tank. we recently moved from north to south islands and brought only a few fish with us, and have only bought a few since being here. perhaps this is part of the problem. the gravel was not washed when we set the new tank up as we wanted to keep the bacteria from it, and we brought as much of the water from the tank as we could, but it would only have been about 1/5 - 1/4 at the very most of total water. all tap water (which is rain water) we treat with a water ager. we have been adding a bit of stress zyme too.

so we have done the tests today and this is our results:

pH: 7.4 (i tested the tap water too which seemed to be 7.4 also)

Ammonia: the test gave 1.0 which according to their table means there is 0.015ppm in our tank water. I hope i did it right.

Nitrite: 0.2. This is worse than yesterday (before our water change yesterday) where it was less.

We will do a 20% water change daily until things improve. We have a good eheim filter, as well as an old undergravel filter that doesn't work. we are going to remove the undergravel filter as there is some waste that is most likely stuck beneath it, good call?

your advice is appreciated. thanks.