I just did a water change and my fish died?
So, I did my usual ever 2 weeks gravel siphon, algae scrape and water change in my 10 gallon aquarium and everything was going normal. I took out the decorations, cleaned them off, scraped the walls of excess algae, siphoned the gunk off of the gravel and then replaced the amount of water I took out (along with adding a teaspoon of aquarium salt like always).
About an hour after I finished doing this, I noticed some of my fish acting funny but one of them went back to acting normal after a few minutes. But then, I noticed that another one was swimming upside-down just before it died. It was the oldest fish in my aquarium so it could have just been old age but still, I'm concerned for the others now. The temperature is the same as it was so it couldn't have been fried or frozen. It just up and died.
Do you think I did something wrong? I honestly don't know because I've done this many times before for the past couple months and it's never bothered them before.
May 7th, 2011 - 05:40
did u have anything on ure hands before?
May 7th, 2011 - 05:42
Then it mustv been dyin
May 7th, 2011 - 06:21
I think this is pretty normal for any fish owners. The same thing has happened to plently of times. I dont think you need to worry. Just try to be more gentle went cleaning your tank. It might be that if you leave the fish in while taking everything out to clean, you could be getting any of the algae or bacteria rubbed off or floated out from the rocks and into the fish systems. So just try to be gentle while takng thngs out of the tank. Hope this help
May 7th, 2011 - 06:50
Well it is probably that the fish became very stressed due to its age. When you handle fish in changing the water, it is good to be careful. I product that I highly recommend and use is STRESS COAT. You can get this at Petsmart or Petco and it immediately calms your fish down. I use this and in about 15 minutes they swim like normal. Oh, and DO NOT WORRY about your fish dying that much. Most people have had fish die in water changes (myself included…countless times). So just put in stress coat with your normal conditioner and the fish should be fine. It’s cheap (like $4) and you only use 1 teaspoon per 10 gal. which is good.
May 7th, 2011 - 07:39
You just added salt? No dechlorinator or anything?
You MUST add dechlorinator to the water to remove the chlorine and other toxic chemicals/minerals from the water. If you didn’t this is what killed your fish and at some point WILL kill the others as well.
If you did add it as well the fish was probably just stressed and due to his old age he couldn’t adjust as well as the younger fish.
Good Luck :]