*my first thread ever!*

I got a ten gallon fish tank a week and a half before Halloween. I never imagined how much hassle there would be! I owned fish when I was younger and I'd never had so many problems. I now know why I've had so many problems.

Firstly, I'm on city water. Even though my fish tank's carbon filter can remove chlorine it can't remove chloramines. I was never told anything about new tank syndrome, ammonia poisoning, or that good bacteria need a month to cycle in a new tank before less-than-hardy fish can be brought in. I started with six fish. Two weeks later I'm down to what I guess I can say to be 'three and a half'. One is likely incurably sick at this point.

It's not ich or finrot. It's ammonia poisoning. >_< All this research I've had to do should have been done before we ever got fish. The ironic thing is - they're not even really mine. They belong to my room mate. So they're an 'ours'.

I've changed the water and run tests. There is no ammonia and everything else is 'perfect' except a barely higher than normal amount of nitrites (not nitrates). But more than anything else, I realized that on city water there might be a hidden problem that the tests don't include - what our city what is treated with. Our drinking water doesn't usually taste or smell like chlorine but occasionally(once a month or so) it is likely treated at the water tower.

So be careful if you ever want fish!!

Now, to spoon off to you some questions (which you should not copy-paste without quoting, btw, even better if you just paraphrase your own answer):

1- Have you ever owned fish?
2- Did fish ever die mysteriously on you?
3- Did you know about new tank syndrome?
4- Did you know what causes it (ammonia levels, lack of a healthy bacteria cycling)?

edit: Responses to posters on the first page thus far and an update on how my surviving fish are doing are in post #12.

i've had several fish. the first fish i ever had was a beta. i had him for about 2 years before he died. i could tell he wasn't going to last much longer since his colors were getting very dull. a few years later, there was a new fish at Walmart called a dragonfish. so, i just had to get one. a month later, all the dragonfish at Walmart were either dead or dying. so, i was so worried about mine, but mine didn't even get sick. the next month, i asked the guy who got the fist, and he said that they needed slightly salted water, and the well water at my parent's place was safe. but, about a year and a half later, my dragonfish froze to death cuz the stupid propane people wouldn't deliver any in the middle of a freezing February. about a month later, i got a few koi and goldfish, but they all died off within 2 months. what's funny is the one that lived the longest was the one with 1 eye. so, i just got another dragonfish, who i still have now. i've had him for about 2 years now, and he's HUGE!! i also go an algae eater about a year ago, and he's huge too. just the other day, my husband got some type of minnow fish, but he thinks that they might be sick, so he's going to buy some medicated food for them soon.
i still don't know why the koi and goldfish died tho. there were 3 koi, and 1 goldfish. the first one to die was the koi that i wanted the most (of course). i really don't know what happened. then the goldfish died, but i think he died of depression cuz when the koi died, he kept trying to make him swim again. the other two, i don't what happened to them either.

That doesn't make any sense.Your fish tank is retarded....but anyway,I like fish.I just like watching them go Glub!

My first fish were goldfish from a Wal Mart. THAT WAS A BIG MISTAKE. They died like... the very next day. 0.0 And there is nothing wrong with my water. And next I got a Betta who lived about 2 or 3 years until he got stuck somehow against a big rock and the edge of the tank and after that wasn't able to swim properly, far, or high. So he died soon after... It was sad... :/ and I have no idea about chemicals and whatnot so I just stick with normal hardy fish. XD But I do want a Bala Shark and a dragonfish someday. :3

Yeah, I just got a new tank recently too...and I got new fish. Actually, I caught new fish and then put them in a tank. 8 minnows and 3 catfish. They're small, but sturdy. You should think about doing that if store-bought ones don't work. I just went down to a stream and snatched them up. The best thing is that they're used to crappy water and stuff. You still need a filter, and heater, but they can live through a lot more than the store-bought kind. Also, you have to be careful that their not carrying anything...anything gross. My past fish had something like worms...not the dog-scoot kind...it was a kind of parasite that took over the tank walls and ate the fish from the inside out. So, be careful.

My grandparents own a restaurant and for about a year they had a huge fish tank. Weeeell. The fish started jumping out. Seriously, they would jump out onto the floor so they got rid of it. They were tired of replacing them XD

I've never owned fish, but I've always wanted one! Maybe when I'm not renting and have a place I own I'll get an aquarium. When I was in Junior High, the school had , and still does, a fish tank with native fish from the local lake.

I'd love to have a fish tank, but my cat would probably kill them in his attempt to catch them lol XD

N/A

Wow....that's a lot of water....and fish I can imagine. What kind of fish do you have ahill?

I've had a few fish before, but never any serious fish. Just gold fish that I won at a fair. Basically, we put them in a little fish bowl, and they ended up committing suicide by leaping out of the bowl. My mom bought replacement fish, but they ended up doing the same thing. Since we didn't actually see them take the leap to their final conclusion, it is possible that my cat got at them, but I assumed that if that happened, they would be eaten rather than simply dead on the kitchen linoleum. I'm really not sure what the deal was, but they weren't big fish, and it wasn't a big bowl. In any case, it was at least six years ago that this happened, and I haven't really tried having fish since. Basically, I figure that cats are somewhat less fragile.

@ Shalandriel - After all the research I've had to do I can tell you in a very nerdy fashion that the fish were jumping out of the water to escape the high nitrite levels. Why it would be high if they'd had the tank for years, I don't know... unless they got a completely new filtration system and cleaned the tank and in the process removed the good bacteria...

@ Rin Yokoshima - Non-tropical fish don't need a heater, rivers and lakes are freezing and those fish winter over, just like in a pond. o_O Fish from streams shouldn't be kept in a tank, at any rate... (In many places it is illegal to keep native wild fish as pets... but that's all I really get after googling.) Fish in streams usually grow to be VERY large... so I don't think they'd survive well in tank since they'd outgrow it.

@ ahill787 - When I put my water in my tank I'd already treated it with AquaSafe that makes tap water safe for fish. Chloramines weren't the likely problem. Nitrites were.

What happened was my fish weren't hardy enough to withstand the chemical changes in the water that naturally take place. That is, the good bacteria have to cycle. I learned what happened, exactly, at fishyou.com - it explains the cycle. Ammonia levels will get really high because there's no good bacteria to break down the fish's waste.

Less hardy fish get ammonia burns, nitrate poisoning, and then die from stress - that is, they get lethargic, won't eat, have trouble breathing, and hemorrhage internally (causing brain damage) - and these are things that new fish owners don't know and won't know if they just shop at WalMart. T_T

Update: Of my remaining two fish, the last pictnus cat, Louis, is finally acting healthy again! He's active (although now strictly nocturnal, when before the group never cared what time of day it was), he's eating again, he's not hiding in his emo corner, and looks quite healthy. He's probably very lonely, though. The goldfish, Tweaky, is just as well as ever, gobbling up his food in record times. But I must not overfeed him.

The nitrite levels rose in my tank over the past two days, and now the nitrate levels are rising to match. That means that the bacteria is present and they are converting it over. It's still slightly too high and so I've done one 25% water change in the middle of the week and now one 50% water change tonight to counteract the high levels nitrites left, as well as add in some more Amquel+ (which shouldn't harm the good bacteria in any way).