A week or two ago my roommate and I bought 5 gallon fish tank and bought 5 neon tetras, 1 clown loach, 1 gourami fish, and 1 really tiny rainbow shark. Three out of 5 tetras died after 1 night and the rainbow shark died about 5 days later. We bought 2 more tetra and a small bala shark (but bigger than the rainbow shark was) and he is currently about to die. The others seem to be doing perfectly fine. Why do my sharks keep dying? I think the tetra died because they were sickly because the place we bought them from had bad looking fish (but none of the other fish were purchased at the same place). Both sharks I've had began to swim vertically and twitch violently and then sink and eventually were not able to move from the bottom of the tank. My shark is dying and I want to know why: (.
hmm .. sorry to say but your doing alot wrong. the associates working at that store should have told you this.
1. You cannot add fish to a tank the same day you buy it. Let it run at LEAST 24 hours before adding fish.
pets question and answers,www.5d2d.com 2. Only add 1 fish at a time
3. The rule is, 1 inch of fish per 1 gallon of water. (Look at there full grown size not the size you buy them at)
4. Neon tetras cannot live with clown loaches or a rainbow shark. Clown loaches and all sharks are aggresive. And most gouramis are aggresive too.
5. You really have too many fish in that tank. Way too many. The 4 neons alone fill the tank.
your water quality is probably awful due to the overcrowding. i would do a water change. not all the water. never take all the water out. by doing this you are also removing that beneficial bacteria that you want in your tank. it breaks down the ammonia (fish waste) to a non harmful form.
also, most sharks are brackish and require aquarium salt.
5 gallons isn't large enough for those fish. sorry. they probably die from stress.
lack of dissolved oxygen.
