Fish Dying

So ive been doing regular water changes, as a matter of fact I just started earlier today on changing the water. I changed the water in 5 of my tanks. I had probly 27 baby guppies in a 10 gal and 5 of them died, I have 2 cichlids in about a 35 gal and so far one of them is dead the other isnt lookin too well either. I finished my last water change about 2 and a half hours ago. I have adult guppies in a 55 and I did a water change and they all look fine the tank has been up for about 6 months. The ten gal with the baby guppies has been up for about 6 months. The 35 gal with the cichlids has been up for about a month. I have a 3 gal with a couple fish in it that I did a water change on too and they are fine. If you have any ideas of what it might be or how I could help them please let me know. Thank you. I checked the ammonia and the ph and they were both good.

What is the ph of your tap water? What is the temperature of the water you are putting in your tanks? Do you use a good dechlorinator? How much water are you changing at a time?

Have you had much rain lately? Sometimes the water company uses a different type of chlorine for a quick purge and the chemical comp is slightly different and couses problems.

What type of dechlorinator are you using?

MarkM wrote:

What is the ph of your tap water? What is the temperature of the water you are putting in your tanks? Do you use a good dechlorinator? How much water are you changing at a time?

intensitti wrote:

Have you had much rain lately? Sometimes the water company uses a different type of chlorine for a quick purge and the chemical comp is slightly different and couses problems.

J*Hawk*83 wrote:

What type of dechlorinator are you using?

????

Also what kind of cichlids.

The ph of my tap water is about a 6.8. I use API stuff. I do approx. 25 to 30% but no more than 30%. We did have a bunch of rain about 4 or 5 days ago or so. I have African Cichlids. I had the two together in about a 35 gal hexagon. One died and the other one I moved to a small betta bowl bc he looked like he was about to die too. He was just sitting at the bottom kinda at a slight angle.

6.8 is way too low for African cichlids of most any kind, unless they are river fish then its ok. But if they are rift lake cichlids then that's a PH shock death, they like 7.8-9.0 on their PH. Can't tell you the exact PH unless I know the kind of fish though.

I dont know exactly what kind they are. They came from walmart. But why would I lose all those baby guppies too. Maybe bc they arent very tolerant since they are still small.

Any large PH or temp change will kill fish.

So what did I do wrong? I have been doin everything the exact same way since day 1 and have had no problems. Do you think it could have been all the rain we got here? It literally rained for just about a solid day but it has been quite a few days ago. Is there something I should do different?

Do you test your tap water every month or so to be sure the PH is consistent?
Do you smell the tap water to see if they doubled up on chlorine?

How is the GH in your tanks? If its low you could have had a PH crash in the tanks and that would have caused the issue. If your GH is low add some crushed coral to help bring it up.

I know a couple of people that have recently lost quite a few fish due to their tap waters Ph being way off from normal. My tap water is usually around 7.8 and I take for granted that it is always going to be 7.8. I hardly ever test my water and apparently my friends that lost fish didn't either. Take from this what you will, but getting in the habit of testing the parameters of your tap water before each water change is a good habit to get into.

Recently I went thru the same thing. Fish are fine day after a water change things start to die. I checked pH. Sure enough it was hitting7.8 as opposed to the 6.9 it was the week before. Also water tested positive for chlorine after it was treated with normal dose of declorinator...City water sucks. Now I fill a 55 gallon trashcan with the water add seachem neutral regulator 7.0 and prime let it sit a day or so make sure pH is where it is and no chlorine in the water. Then instead of hooking my python to the sink i just hook a powerhead up and refill the tanks. I feel your pain

That sounds like a good idea, I might have to give that a try. Thanks Elrollo. And thanks to everyone else. Hopefully that doesn't happen again.