they're dying 1-2 a day!

[tricia]

We are relative newbies -- a 10-gallon tank, which we began about 18 months ago. Lost a fair # of fish until we cycled through and got the water just right. Then we had a stable lot of about 8 small fish.
About a month ago, one of our scissors died. We replaced it with 2 painted tetras. Everyone seemed to get along fine.
Last weekend, we noticed ick on our red-fin shark, our red swordtail and our pleisto. Treated with meds, took out carbon filter and raised tank temp to about 83.
We lost the shark, the swordtail, and one guppy, as well as another scissor this weekend. The two new tetras look great and the pleisto is hanging in there, as is a glass catfish (no sign of ick on him or the tetras). No one seems to be eating as much as usual, though, and one guppy is "resting" on the bottom a lot.
IF the two new fish brought in the ick, wouldn't they have it?
Also, we don't have one of those deepsea diver oxygenating thingies that make bubbles -- should we? we did fine for over a year without it.

 

[FroggyFox]

Sorry to hear about your losses...a lot of times new fish will introduce a sickness. The new fish might have had it in their tank and had a better immune response, then your new fish were stressed out and caught it easily, or who knows.

Sometimes when your tank is overstocked the fish are stressed out and more susceptible to infections...

You dont need a little bubble decoration. Only reason you ever 'need' one of those is if the oxygen content in your water is low and your fish seem to be gasping at the surface of the water.

 

[tricia]

thanks

Thanks for that! I still feel guilty when they die. .. hate those burials "at sea"! (Flushing sound . . . )
1 fish per gallon is tops, right? So 10 fish max for a 10-gallon tank?

 

[dss2004]

No it is one inch per gallon not one fish per gallon. This doesn't mean that you can stick a ten inch fish into a ten gallon aquarium.

The shark was too small for that aquarium. If you had say two swordtails and two guppies you would be fine. That is like 11-13 inches of fish (inches are relative to the adult size.) You said you had 8 small fish. Well the red finned shark reaches about 4-6 inches which means it needs a larger aquarium to swim comfortably as it is a very active fish. The swordtails each reach 4 or so inches and the scissor-tail can also reach four inches. The pleisto (I am not sure I think you may mean pleco) is way to big for a ten gallon.

So if all your fish are around 3-4 inches on average then you had around 24-35 inches of fish in a ten gallon aquarium. This is really over-stocked and problems like what you have expierenced are not uncommon.

I would think about which of the fish I really liked and go about setting my tank up around them. Most livebearers will do fine in a ten gallon. Glass catfish need to be in a school of 5 or more to be comfortable.

You could have a couple swordtails a 3-4 guppies or maybe some cories and your tank would be pretty well stocked. Also painted tetras are dyed to look that way and usually carry many dieseases because their immune systems don't funtion correctly due to the injecting of harmful dyes.

I hope this helps some. Keep posting if you have anymore questions.

EDIT: One last thing, when planning fish for a tank always take the adult size of a fish into account.