Topic: Help! I changed my water and now my fish are dying! (Read 813 times)

bear · « **on:** July 27, 2008, 02:34:07 pm »

I had not been able to change my water in quite a while, but on the advice of many people, I changed about 50% of the water, and this morning, 5 out of 11 fish are dead, and the ones left aren't doing so good. What happened? I thought water changes were a good thing! Did I do something wrong?

confusion · « **Reply #1 on:** July 27, 2008, 02:48:20 pm »

How long did you go between water changes? What size tank is it? What fish are in it?

In general, water changes do not kill healthy fish. I suspect that the water had become extremely polluted and the fish were both acclimated to the bad water, and were also made quite weak by it. Very old tank water will tend to go through terrible PH swings as well. So, when you changed the water, you dramatically altered the chemistry of the water (arguably for the better), but because your fish were weakened, they did not survive the shock.

dekker · « **Reply #2 on:** September 23, 2008, 12:55:08 am »

all that confusion say is bang on plus i think 50% water changers is to much 20% is just fine, 50% will take a lot of good bacteria out of the water, so try just 20% and see if it makes a difference. also do you add any thing to you freah water like aquaplus, this removes harmful metals and makes the water safe. it is a good idea to get a test kid for ph etc,so you can test you water on a weekly basics, again hope this helps.

cheers...........dekker

Author Topic: Help! I changed my water and now my fish are dying! (Read 813 times)

bear

Help! I changed my water and now my fish are dying!

confusion

Re: Help! I changed my water and now my fish are dying!

dekker

Re: Help! I changed my water and now my fish are dying!