Help! 3 of my cherry barbs have already died!

[shyta]

Hey guys, I need some help.. After a few weeks of fishless cycling, I finally went to get my fish. I bought a few guppies and cherry barbs. However, there seems to be something wrong as 3 of my cherry barbs have already died. I did notice a change of behavior though. They seem to listlessly stay at the bottom of the tank, and seem to drift to the side.

I checked out some symptoms on fish diseases and the closest possibility I came to was swim bladder problems, just that they didn't seem to have problems balancing, just problem staying afloat..

Can someone help me?

[kenny]

Hi

lethargy is a common symptom when fish is in poor health. It could be due to diseases or just poor water chemistry.

did you measure the water parameters to check if cycling is complete? If completed, could nitrate be too high? Were they acclimatized well? Anti-chlorine? Too much fish at one go? Tank size?

Those are some questions that came to my mind, many other possible reasons too. You can try small water changes to see if that helps for the time being.

Good luck

[shyta]

Hi kenny,

Thanks for replying! Before I got my fishes, I did help a friend hold his barbs and tetras as his tank was having algae problems. During that period, there were zero casualties so I assumed my tank was safe to start rearing fishes. My fish tank is 50cmx30cmx30cm, that should be around 10 gallons I guess. I bought 4 guppies, 6 cherry barbs and 3 panda corys.

I only had them for a day so I presumed they (the cherry barbs) weren't well acclimatised at all. The guppies and panda corys seem to be doing fine though..

And at the moment, I do not have a test kit to measure the nitrate levels sadly.

[Tamama]

You can start by buying the all in one test stripes. You may try to do a water change.. Before you add the new water, leave the water in a bucket with the anti chlorine for 2 days.

I hope this helps. Also avoid over feeding. I used to feed my fishes once a week only.

Better if you can post a photo of your tank and equipment etc. =)

[shyta]

once a week? isn't that a bit too little?