emergency aquarium help needed!!?

Question

I got new fish for my aquarium yesterday-- i have a 5 gallon, two new swordtails, three fish total.

one died this morning, but it was the one that I had for almost a year. the two new ones are hanging out at the bottom sort of on their side, but still breathing....

is there anything I can do??????

ask if you need more details.

one swims around and then falls on the ground and goes up side down over and over.

Answer 1

This sounds a lot like a water quality issue. Check to be sure the tank is the right temperature and that your filter is working properly. Then change about half of the water in the tank. If possible, check the ammonia and nitrites in the tank. If all those check out to be ok, look for any other signs of disease or illness you can see and describe those as best as you can in another post. Give as much detail about your tank as possible, there is no such thing as too much information when trying to reach a diagnosis if a problem like this.

MM

Answer 2

Did you "float" the bag with the new fish to acclimate the water temperature?
Did you pour a majority of the new fishes water in when you added them? You could have introduced something from the pet store.

In a small aquarium it takes little to change the water temperature. This will really affect a fishes health. Crazy as it sounds, salt will many times nurse water back to health. Rock salt is better than table salt. A teaspoon should be enough.

Answer 3

How soon before you got your new fish had you done a water change? And did you add the water from the new fish bag to your tank?

What this sounds like to me is that if you added water from the new fish, that any ammonia they produced in their bag got added to the tank. Your previous fish wasn't used to the level (his tank had cycled) and he died from ammonia poisoning. The new fish were in the ammonia, so by diluting it with the tank water allowed them to survive, but with the death of your previous sword, more ammonia was produced and now the 2 new guys are feeling the effects. A partial water change can help - I'd say do about 1/3 to 1/2 of the tank water.

Another thing that can help is the addition of a little salt to the tank. Just don't use anything with iodine added (like iodized table salt), but kosher, canning, pickling, or aquarium salt are okay. Add about 1 Tbsp. to the tank.

See this link on ammonia poisoning: http://www.fishdeals.com/fish_diseases/ammonia_poisoning/

Answer 4

maybe there's something in the tank that's making them sick.

if you have anything other than gravel, take them out. especially live plants. i had a friend who thought a live plant would look cute and a day after she put it in the tank, all of the fishes died. something to do with the plant being mis-prepped.

could also be that the other two had diseases and your old fish died of it before these two are going to.

or maybe it's the water. did you prepare the water properly? did you also make sure that the temperature of the old water is about the same as the new when transferring? that can also kill them too.

Answer 5

I read that most new fish come with some sort of disease or another. Did you do a water change? One thing that helped me learn to keep my water in ballance was to go get a bottle of testing strips. That way I could test my water when any of my fish showed signs of illness. You can also get medication at the pet store. They are easy to use and some come with helpfull booklets.

Answer 6

do a partial water change now.