My poor little fishies are just dropping dead!!

[wontonflip]

Honestly, I think Petco just sold you sickly fish. Buying from them is a gamble Bifferwine bought a few of her fish there, and they survived for years and were healthy. In my Petco, their tank is awful and full of ich and god knows what else.

Plus you need to drip-acclimate. That will increase your fish's survival chances.

Also be aware that those fish you bought -- scopas and angel -- need a 125g or larger tank anyway.

 

[Ted]

Welcome to the forum...actually we like new people...even better when they stay around to become old people..if you get my meaning. I am not going to shoot off a bunch of the same questions. Just something from my own experience. I have attempted to purchase fish many times from petco, to date none have lived. Not doing that again. If possible find a local store and become friendly with the owner. Have them hold fish for a few days before bringing them home. If a fish costs more then $10 ask to see it eat. I use to be one of those people that would show up on shipment day for the 10% off sale on day of shipment...cost me a fortune. To me it sounds like a acclimation issue. I drip acclimate everything even corals. Good luck and keep giving more information. The people on here will hunt and hunt to help you solve the problem. Another thing that could help would be start a tank thread, show everything. Lights, filters, skimmers, powerheads etc no information is trivial. Where did the rock come from (petco, some creek, made it yourself whatever) Another thing....sometimes fish just die. Not usually in these kind of numbers but it happens. :shock:

 

[Breadman03]

You said you use tap water. As water evaporates and you top off, impurities increase in concentration. It is possible that your current fish can tolerate the level of impurities in your tank, but that many cannot.

I bought a RODI filter to eliminate that problem from my tank. If you don't want to do that, perhaps several large water changes over the course of a couple weeks would help bring those impurities back down.

I don't trust my closest LFS as nothing from them has survived more than a couple weeks, but everything I have ordered from LiveAquaria has done fine. I would also try a source other than Petco to change that variable.

 

[sen5241b]

You said you use tap water. As water evaporates and you top off, impurities increase in concentration. It is possible that your current fish can tolerate the level of impurities in your tank, but that many cannot.

I bought a RODI filter to eliminate that problem from my tank. If you don't want to do that, perhaps several large water changes over the course of a couple weeks would help bring those impurities back down.

I don't trust my closest LFS as nothing from them has survived more than a couple weeks, but everything I have ordered from LiveAquaria has done fine. I would also try a source other than Petco to change that variable.

You hit the nail on the head.

One big rule in this hobby: NEVER use tap water! I would be shocked if there were any other problems with your tank. Even if you use De-chlorinator there are still other chems in tap water such as heavy metals and hardly any LFS can test for them. If you don't want to spend money on a RO filtration system then you can use distilled water. I had a filter and it had so many problems I ended up spending more money per gallon on it then the distilled from my grocery store.

Also you should run carbon, lots of it, to get the existing metals out of the water. Rinse it first of course.

 

[Northstar24]

The symptom that is throwing me off is that the OP said the fish started swimming oddly, like they were drunk. There has to be some sort of contaminant or disease in the water for fish to start behaving in this manner. They don't just start swimming 'drunk'

 

[excrider121]

I have a carbon filter. We have been using tap water for years and no problems. Thanks for the concern though.

Yes, the newly bought fish started to swim drunk-ishly, then died several hours later. Not all of the new fish that we've put in the tank recently have been dying off, but most have died within the first 1-2 weeks.

Increased amounts of impurities that the 'home team' fish might be used to would explain why the newer fish haven't been able to handle the tank. We plan on getting some cheap fish tonight, we will try that and see what happens.

 

[sen5241b]

I have a carbon filter. We have been using tap water for years and no problems. Thanks for the concern though.

Yes, the newly bought fish started to swim drunk-ishly, then died several hours later. Not all of the new fish that we've put in the tank recently have been dying off, but most have died within the first 1-2 weeks.

Increased amounts of impurities that the 'home team' fish might be used to would explain why the newer fish haven't been able to handle the tank. We plan on getting some cheap fish tonight, we will try that and see what happens.

No offense but I strongly disagree. Even though I haven't seen your tank and even though its been running years on tap water, I would say its almost impossible that tap water is not causing any problems. "No tap water" is a hard and fast rule in this hobby because it always causes problems.

 

[Northstar24]

I have a carbon filter. We have been using tap water for years and no problems. Thanks for the concern though.

Yes, the newly bought fish started to swim drunk-ishly, then died several hours later. Not all of the new fish that we've put in the tank recently have been dying off, but most have died within the first 1-2 weeks.

Increased amounts of impurities that the 'home team' fish might be used to would explain why the newer fish haven't been able to handle the tank. We plan on getting some cheap fish tonight, we will try that and see what happens.

Dont put anything in the tank that you wont be happy with, catching fish you want to remove to replace with something else is a nightmare.

Have you tested for heavy metals in the water? While I agree that Petco may be selling you bad fish, I think that there may be something else in the water as well. I recently had issues with the well water I had been using for my tank. I had been using for about 2 years, and iron built up in my tank (Well water was contaminated with it, and even an RO/DI didn take care of it all). I lost several fish to this within a span of two weeks, including my favorites, a Potters Angel and an Achilles Tang as well as the corals in my tank - it was an expensive lesson.