Well, I'm Mark. I'm new the the aquarium "thing", and found this forum while trying to figure out what happened to all our fish. Here's my intro/story...

I'm sure alot of intro's start like this, but, my 10year old son used his birthday money to get a Aqueon 10Gallon Starter kit back in August of 2011. I honestly have never had any interest in aquariums. My sister has a beautiful saltwater tank, and based on watching her it just seemed boring and like it was alot of work. Anyway, We buy my kids kit, get it home, and try to set it up per the North Dallas Aquariums instructions. Of course we both forgot about half of what they told us by the time we got it set up. We treat the water, wait a couple days, then buy some fish. A couple Tetra's and a Plady.

Much to my surprise, the fish did great, and much more to my surprise I found myself REALLY enjoying his aquarium. My son and I like to shut all the lights off and just sit and watch the fish. The colors are great, the fish are graceful, and the trickling water from the filter is so relaxing.

After a couple months, My wife started getting into it to. Of course my 15 year old son wouldn't admit to liking it, but I would catch him gazing at it from time to time as well. We decided we liked it so much that during one of the partial water changes we moved it out into the living room where we could spend more time with it.

At this point I finally started doing some research and found out about how to properly cycle the tank, maintain it, ect. It's been going well regardless of my ignorance, and we added some more fish, for a total of 5 and all was going well until last weekend.

We got up Saturday morning and a fish had died, our 1st death. We were pretty bummed. As we were taking that fish out we noticed the rest of them were acting odd. I did a 50% water change, treated and tested the water before and after I added it to the tank and they seemed to be improving. Unfortunately over the next two day's all of them had passed away. I'm not sure what happened, but I hastily made a poor decision and cleaned the tank from top to bottom, Then I found this forum. I've read that I should have taken the water to get tested, but my test strips and Ammonia monitor said all was well. I'm wishing I would have taken the water for a 2nd opinion.

After letting the tank sit for a while I now realize that I think the water got to cold. Ambient temp in the room is 72 and the tank didn't have a heater. Living in Texas I never imagined I'd need a heater. I also think, From reading this site and a few others, I was changing to much of the water to often. I was doing about 30% water changes about every 10 days. The water was kind of cloudy so I thought it was dirty. I never could get it to be as clear as we would have liked.

So, moving forward, and starting out fresh, I'm hoping that this weekend I'll have time to get some new gravel, get the tank filled and start cycling it properly this time. I'm still trying to decide if I want to do the fishless cycle or cycle it with some hardy fish, either way, I'm looking forward to getting it going again and enjoying the sites and sounds of it!

Sorry for the long winded intro...
Mark

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hello and welcome Mark

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What happens if you get scared half to death, twice?

Welcome! I feel the need to mention that unless you just prefer another type or color of gravel over what you have, you don't need to buy new stuff. But anyway, good luck on round two!

Welcome. A few things come to mind from your post. First of all, you were not changing too much water. Many of us here, myself included, change 50%+ on a weekly basis.

My educated guess on what happened, was that one of the new fish you added had something. Could be ich, could be a parasite, anything. This is why it is important to quarantine new fish before adding them to an existing tank.

A heater will help, but 72 isnt terribly cold. I keep mine around 76-78.

That's all I can think of, off hand.

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"Being ignorant is not so much a Shame, as being unwilling to learn".-- Benjamin Franklin

Welcome!

Also to add onto what others have already said something that stuck out to me was that you were using test "strips" for the water. They are very innacturate and are basically useless IMO. I would suggest spending $30 on the API water testing kit. It uses water in test tubes to check everything and is very reliable. You can find them at Petco and Petsmart without a problem.

Well, I kinda freaked and was afraid we had gotten a disease so I tossed all the old gravel. We are ready for a color change anyway. Thanks for the advice though.

Welcome, I'd say your son made a fantastic investment, sounds like the whole family got bit by the"fish bug". good luck . if that happens again I suggest taking a sample in to LFS and maybe even one of the dead fish,( in seperate containers though) so they can see what is going on,

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90 gallon, 1 Iridescent shark, 2 Pleco, 3 Goldfish, 5 Cory cats, 2 Nerite snails
5 gallon hex, Blue Crowntail Betta, 1 nerite snail,

welcome to the site. it's nice to see someone taking the time to do a little reading and research the hobby. sounds like you've got a good grasp on things.

Going out on a limb here and saying it wont be long before you are stepping up in tank size.

Welcome to the forum!

Hehe. I've already been trying to talk my wife into a bigger tank. She's slowly warming up to the idea.

Hey and welcome Mt looks like your heading in the right direction! and good work on starting off with a reasonable tank! alot of people start huge kill a ton of fish and then we get there tanks at the spring garage sales!!!

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When you pay that cash or swipe that card you are making a bond with that animal that you will treat it with love and respect, and its needs will be met, first and foremost (unless you have kids...) I don't care if you have to eat ramen noodles or nothing at all to feed your cat dog fish rat whatever. That's the bond you made! Life is precious!

I'm gonna change the color of my gravel pretty soon too I think. For future reference, if you ever experience a parasite or disease again, you can put the gravel in pots of boiling water to kill the invaders or you can let it completely dry out and rinse it real well. It's a pain boiling gravel when you have a lot of it but I've done it several times.

Hi Mark. Welcome to the forum.

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Help those in our hobby to exceed beyond their expectations.
Aquatic Engineer