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My Platy died,I'm affraied to lose more fish! please Help!

3K views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  Kim 
#1 ·
I have a 20 gal fish tank, and has been running for a month. I'm checking pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate every other day. pH is 6.4, ammonia is 0.25 and 0 Nitrite. In my tank I have a piece of wood, rock and live plants and I'm using Bio-wheel power filter.
In my fish tank right now I have 3 guppies, 1 platy, 2 mollies, 7 tetras and 2 alge eater. Last night I lost one red platy, she seems so sad a day before she died, and keep being on the surface and last night she went down and in the morning she was dead. I bought this platy 2 weeks ago and from beginning she was more quite than my other platy. I don't know what happened to her, my other fish doing fine but I'm so afraid to lose my black molly, he was on the surface yesterday too but this morning he was doing better and he was eating a bit too (but less than he used to).
My question is: did my low pH kill my platy? Shall I remove the wood as it could be the source of lowering the pH.
btw I have to say that too that I got my wood and stone from river side (portland, OR) and I heard that they could bring heavy metals to my tank and can kill my fish. Is it true?
So what should I do now? I dont want to lose any more fish.
Thanks,
Nina
 
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#2 ·
First off, ammonia level needs to be at zero. You have a lot of fish in a very small tank which could be why your ammonia level is so high, assuming of course that the tank has already completed the cycle, you may just have too many fish in the tank.

Did you clean the stone or the wood before putting it in your tank? Not only can the chemicals or metals affect it, but any disease in the water that you took them from will spread to your tank if they aren't cleaned properly.
 
#3 ·
Thanks for the reply!
My ammonia is 0.25 ppm. I taught its poisoning if it is more than 0.5 ppm.
For washing stuff, I just put both stone and wood in the water for one hour and rains them well and they were there when I first started my tank.
 
#4 ·
Any level of ammonia over 0 is harmful to fish. I would do a water change immediately to remove the ammonia. After that you can start thinking of some long term solutions such as moving some of the fish into another tank, doing more frequent water changes, or using another filter with carbon in it along with your current one. As far as cleaning the stone and wood, I would never trust anything that has not been boiled first. Good luck.
 
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