South American Cichlids • help! all my fish are dying!

[cichlidstoned]

my parents have a 50G bowfront tank that is fairly new. we cycled the tank a little over a month ago and since most of the fish that have gone in there have died. PH seems to be good as well as temperature. I put in 1 jack dempsey, 1 salvini and 1 green terror all about 1inch. i also put a few loaches and tiger barbs and a pleco. the cichlids are still alive and seem fine, but all the rest have died. today however the salvini can barely swim (hes mostly upside down floating in the current, but still alive for now) and has bubbles stuck to his body. also none of the fish are eating.


today i did a 30% water change and am hoping it will have a positive affect.

any ideas / tips?

[ahud]

Post the bread and butter parameters:

Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. PH would help as well, as it would let us know how toxic ammonia is (if there is any present).

Without this information, any opinions you get are just guesswork.

[cichlidstoned]

i'll get on those numbers

[neutrino]

How did you cycle the tank?

[Z90a]

sounds like amonia poisioning. if you just cycled the tank perhaps you jumped forward to fast befor the tank was done... how did you cycle it? maybe the bacteria you managed to gain in the cycle could not keep up with the combined bioloads of all the fish you put in causing an amonia spike.

[stingray62]

Its sounds to me that i thinkthat you introduced your stock too much too soon. The bacteria i think was still not quite adequete to handle the sudden bio-load from all your recent introductions into the tank, and now you have experienced an ammonia spike and a surge of nitrates which are very toxic to your fish. A partial water change will benefit greatly to lower these toxins but if you can i would seed the tank with more bacteria, either with filter media or gravel from an already established tank. Please do your fish and yourself a favor and purchase a water test kit to monitor your waters parameters so you can take appropriate measures to correct any problems.In a fresh set-up check every couple of days till your ammonia\nitrite drop to zero levels then the tank should be fully cycled.Check water weekly afterwards.Hope this helps you out,good luck with your future endeavours.