(09-18-2012, 11:54 PM)Sandra Piddock Wrote: We buy new fish from our local vet/pet store where one of the assistants knows a lot about fish. The first thing she said to us was to keep the fish in the water they provided, and place the bag in the tank, so that the two lots of water mixed and the fish could swim out in its own time. It's not such a shock to the system then.
So that's one thing you're doing wrong. I think you're also rushing things. We were told not to even think of introducing fish to the tank for at least 4 weeks. Maybe before you get any more fish you need to do some research, and talk to an expert. It's not fair to the fish if they only last a day or two, because you can't wait to get the tank conditions right.
Standard procedure to add new fish into the tank should be adding the tank water little by little into the bag. To let the fish get used to your tank water slowly. Once the bag is too full, get ride of half the water and add more tank water slowly. The whole process should take no less than one hour in my opinion. For some more sensitive fish species, it can take 2~3 hours with less tank water being added into the bag each time and longer wait time between each adding.
For new tanks that had never had fish, we need to do fishless cycle. It can take up to 6~8 weeks, sometimes it's much faster if you do heavy bacteria seeding. Simply "wait" will not do any good.
