We buy fish and bring them home to kill them

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not on purpose, of course. But we seem to have trouble keeping fish alive in our aquarium.

My son brought home a Beta fish from his prom. That thing lasted for more than a year in a bowl, no filter. Ivylad likes to watch the fish swimming around, so after the Beta died, he bought a 10-gallon tank, a filter, and some fish at the local pet place.

We know Betas are territorial, so we haven’t gotten any of them. But we’ve run through goldfish, neons, black mollies, those little sharkfish, and two sucker fish.

We feed them 2-3 times a day, the filter runs fine, but we can’t seem to keep the fish alive for more than a month or so. Right now we have one fish left, a little gold fish.

I am wary about buying any more fish just to bring them home and kill them. What are we doing wrong?

2

Just fish? I was telling my husband about all the family pets we killed in my family over the years; dogs, puppies, cats, kittens, hamsters, fish, turtles, birds, rabbits, geese, ducks, chickens…I can understand if you’re specializing, though.

3

Well, if you’re feeding them 2 or 3 times a day, that’s part of it. Way too much.

Ten gallons is really too small for an easy-running tank, too. Have you read much on fish keeping? Specifically on the nitrogen cycle? Many, many, MANY (including me as a child) people kill and kill and kill essentially with “new tank syndrome”.

4

Overfeeding? Funny, Ivylad thought we might be underfeeding them.

And 10 gallons is too small? Well, until we get this fish-keeping under control, I’d hate to buy a bigger tank, only to stock it with even more doomed fishies.

What’s the nitrogen cycle? I guess it’s a bit more complicated than we thought…we thought you fill the tank with filtered water, a few accessories to for the fish to hide around, and voila! A little ecosystem to enjoy.

5

Missed the edit window:

How accurate is this?

6

I’ve never done a fishless cycle - always accomplished it by starting with a small number of hardy fish such as danios or platys.
The list recommends plants, but does not acknowledge the light and ferts plants will require. I’m one of those weirdos who is more interested in the plants in my aquaria than the fish.
You need to research what type of fish you want to keep. The ones you list having tried prefer widely different temps.
In simple terms, a smaller tank - such as a 10 - can be more subject to variations than a larger tank. In many respects it can be easier to keep parameters in a 125 gal tank steadier than a 10. Also, a 10 really can only hold a limited number of fish. A simple, very general equation is no more than 1" of adult fish length per gallon.
You also need to decide what level of water changes you want to do.

You really need to do a tad more research than any of us can provide in forum responses - tho i’d be happy to take a crack at any specific questions. There are a ton of aquaria sites/forums out there.

It really is not hard, but it is somewhat more complicated that “Fill tank with water and fish - enjoy!” :wink:

7

That inch per fish thing is NOT true for thick-bodied fish like your goldfish. They take up more “room” in your tank than a skinny fish of the same length.

An over-simplified explanation of the nitrogen cycle:

Fish poop ammonia. In a river or lake, there’s enough water that this doesn’t poison them. In your fish tank, it will. (Go stick your head in a bottle of Windex for a bit and see how you feel.)

Bacteria eat ammonia and poop nitrites.

Other bacteria eat the nitrites and poop nitrates.

What you need is enough bacteria working in your aquarium to eat all the ammonia your fishies are pooping. Now, you can achieve that by just letting a few hardy fish jumpstart everything, or you can do “fishless cycling”. Either way, you need your tank cycled or your fish are gonna be floating.

Plants definitely make it easier - they don’t all have high light requirements, either.

Never, ever, EVER unless in dire need “clean your tank” - you know, dump it, scrub it, etc. No matter how bad your problem is, that’s only going to make it worse by absolutely murdering all your bacteria.

You do know to condition the water before you dump it in there, right? To dechlorinate it? Because that will kill the hell out of your fish as well.

ETA - your local library will have a billion books on this, or visit an actual aquarium store. Not Wal-Mart - a real aquarium store. For one thing, they won’t sell you fish that won’t get along together. For another, hopefully they won’t give you a goldfish to put in a ten gallon tank.

8

Yeah, it sounds like the problem is a combination of too much food, too many fish, and the tank has not had the chance to establish a “nitrogen cycle”.
I would recommend choosing different kinds of fish next time. Neons are NOTORIOUSLY delicate and have a high mortality rate even in good tank conditions.
Most goldfish fanciers feel that a single goldfish should have 10-20 gallons all to itself to do well. “Goldfish bowls” are pretty much death traps for anything except bettas. They’re definitely not good for goldfish despite the name.
Here’s some advice on selecting fish: FAQ: Good (and Bad) Beginner Fish

9

Well, we use water filtered through our Pur water filter, then let it stand for an hour before putting the fish in.

It seems we went blindly forth. I had no idea about the good bacteria. Ivylad and I will have some research to do before buying more fish.

10

I was thinking about setting up a fish tank, and did some research. Lemon tetras seem to be fairly easy to care for. They are not as flashy as some fish, but I was thinking of having half a dozen or more lemons to start out with, and then adding more tetras of different kinds for more color. Personally, I enjoy watching schooling fish, especially flashy ones.

I eventually decided against having an aquarium, because I have cats that get into everything…and if they CAN’T get into something, they’ll keep trying different ways, which invariably causes a mess.

11

Get some zebra danios. They’re schooling fish, so they hang out together and move around a lot. They’re really fast! They’re kind of neat looking, although they’re not super-flashy. They’re also very hardy. Very good first fish.

ETA - do those filters take out chlorine and chloramine? There are a million brand names of water conditioner sold anywhere you can get fish - I like Prime myself, if you’re not sure if your water is getting properly conditioned. I’d guess your issue is cycling, though.

12

I am not, by any standard, a fish expert. But my problem is that the darn goldfish KEEP LIVING!

4 years ago, I bought 2 dozen feeder goldfish for my outdoor pond. I figured that they’d eat some skeeter larvae before predators and neglect did them in. That fall, there were still 2 dozen swimming around - much bigger than the itty-bitties I put there. I got a 10 gallon tank, set it up, cleaned it occasionally, fed them when I remembered, and put them back out in the spring.

Some things have reduced the numbers a bit over the years - we have a crow with a taste for carp. I still have at least 11. I had to borrow another tank, and even then they are crowded by any fish enthusiast’s standards. I just “fished” them out today, as a matter of fact, and hoping that the numbers had dwindled further, I only set up one tank. Looks like I’ll have to set the other one up tomorrow.

I feed them every few days in the winter, and only for a while in spring (outside) until the bugs get active. Those critters are living on what they can catch, pretty much.

Oh, and they invited some frogs in - last year, while fishing out the fishies, I found 4 frogs sleeping on the bottom of the pond. I left them in, but found them dead in the spring. This year - four more frogs. Today, I got the pleasure of driving some chilly frogs to a better winter spot.

If you lived a bit closer, I be happy to give you a few of my (now 4-5 inch long) Unkillable Goldfish!

13

If you go to a good pet store, they should have fish experts who can tell you where you’re going wrong, what kind of fish you need, if you need to add anything to your water, what plants will help, etc.

I don’t know how small 10 gallons is, but maybe a little bubbler would help? Not sure of the technical term … sorry.

My husband does all the yucky fish tank work in our house - I just feed them and point out the occasional dead one.

Right now we are having very bad luck with aquatic froggies (the kind that can live in water and only come up for oxygen on occasion) … poor little buggers. :frowning:

14

I have excellent luck with my African Dwarf Frogs. Anything I can assist you with? Mine were just hand fed little pieces of sirloin steak for their dinner :slight_smile:

15

I used to be a semi serious aquarium hobbyist. Had at one point two 60 gallon fresh (1 south american ciclids, 1 tropical) and one 65 gallon saltwater reef tank.

If you really want to keep an aquarium, 60 gallons is about the place to start.

Fish selection can be a huge deal because certain fish do poorly in certain water chemistry like discus or ciclids.

Start by adding just a couple fish to a 60. Yes, it isn’t as fun to look at, but it allows you to start the nitrogen cycles in your tank without spiking the nitrate levels. If everything looks good after a month or so, add one more. Wait another month or so, add another.

This also allows the fish to acclimate to their new neighbors and lets them find their own personal hidey holes.

I have always been a big fan of heavy rock work and plants. Yes it does restrict the view a bit but it also makes the fish less stressed out because they can hide.

Plants should also be added slowly, a dead plant can destroy water chemistry just as surely as too many fish will.

16

Here’s one of my frogs:

17

Fish are odd. One can do things that should kill them - and don’t. Or do things that should help them thrive, and kill them.

Allow me to present the story of FrankenFish.
My former housemate has a fondness for animals of all sorts. Well, almost all sorts. At the moment cats are not high on her list. (The last three we’d lived with all have had issues about mistaking closets and clean laundry with the litterbox.) And she was not willing to let me get a skunk. Aside from that, however, she has three dogs, and a small salt-water aquarium.

Contrary to what you may be thinking, FrankenFish was NOT in the salt water aquarium. It lived in another aquarium, and technically wasn’t my housemate’s fish. Instead it was The Monster’s fish. My housemate had a tendency to go into pet stores to drool at the various salt water fish they might have. Unfortunately, The Monster, really doesn’t understand the joys of window shopping so, when she sees the walls of aquaria she starts campaigning for one of her own. My solution would have been to not bring the child into the store, but my housemate choose, instead to get her a feeder tetra, and let her think of it as ‘her’ fish. The first several of these fish came home and died within a day: between the lack of food, the disturbance of any sense of equilibrium that The Monster inflicted (She liked, greatly, to shake the bag with the fish in it.), and the lack of oxygenation, or filtration of the water they’d been living in, there really wasn’t much hope for 'em.

But, then, there was FrankenFish.

First, The Monster was particularly insistent on being able to keep hold of ‘her’ fish. So, for the first two nights, she slept with the bag, and the fish in it, in her bed. Taking care to shake it vigorously whenever it appeared that the fish had recovered from the last such assault. Then once we were able to take the bag from The Monster and transfer the fish into a holding vessel (in this case a glass flower vase) he was put in cold tap water, untreated and unfiltered. Usually the chemical shock alone or the temperature shock is enough to kill off such feeder fish. But not so here. So, about once a week my housemate would remember to dump out about half the water in the vase and replace it with fresh. That was the only oxygenation, and filtration, that the fish was experiencing. Again, a regimen that is usually fatal to these fish.

And during the month to six weeks that FrankenFish was being kept like this… he was not fed. (I hadn’t realized this at the time. It’s not MY fault, honest. Besides, that’s another reason I like dogs, they can tell you that they’ve been starved and need to be fed. They may not mean it, but they won’t let you ignore them to death. I know I can’t keep plants.) So, my housemate woke up one morning and realized that FrankenFish (as I’d taken to calling it) was still ALIVE! (Cue movie voices here. You know the film and scene.) So she got out from her storage a small 5 gallon counter aquarium and set it up for FrankenFish.

We all expected him to die of shock from the transition to a properly cared for and oxygenated tank… but no, he’s still alive. In fact, my former housemate thought that the tank was likely conditioned enough to get another feeder to keep FrankenFish company.

The newbie didn’t last long enough to get named.

And then, FrankenFish started eating the body.

I think that FrankenFish was a zombie fish… :eek:

18

Nice. Cute little bugger.

19

Big aquariums are indeed easier to keep stable than smaller ones (since a larger volume of water can dilute the toxins from the waste easier) but I have two 29 gallon tanks and a 20 gallon tank that have been running well for years now. It’s just very important to be cautious about how many fish and what kind you add, whatever your tank size is.

As far as tetras go, I have found serpae tetras to be incredibly hardy fish who are pretty and don’t grow very big. Their only drawback is that they like to nip other fish’s fins, so you can run into problems keeping them with long-finned fish.

20

I think it must be your nitrogen cycle, as mentioned by other posters – that takes 3 weks to a month, about the timeframe you mention. Read up on it and you may be able to solve your problem.