Stress Zyme: 10 mL
Number of Fish Removed: 9
Today I removed nine fish from the tank. Seven of them I'm pretty sure died of starvation, as they were really skinny and had not appeared to have made many developmental changes over the last week or so. Their coloration was still very dark on their backs, where as the stronger fish had acquired a much lighter coloration by now. The other two fish who passed away had actually gotten pinched between the aquarium floor and one of the rocks. It seems that they would have been weaker fish of the bunch as they were hiding among the rocks, so they were most likely on their way out before they got caught. Still, I feel terrible about this and hope that this same thing does not happen again.
When I water quality tested today, I made a mistake and learned from it. By accident I fed the fish first and then I took my water samples, so when I tested the nitrite it came out to be 0.25 ppm (mg/L) which is higher than normal. But I realized when I looked in the test tube there was a chunk of food floating in it, this is what caused it to be so high! I went ahead and retested the nitrite about 5 minutes later and this time it tested normal. Now I know better than to feed the fish before water testing!
Ten fish look weak today, they probably won't make it too much longer. When I fed them today about 30% of the fish surfaced to eat, hopefully the other fish will catch on soon. I changed the water today and fish were fed at 11:00pm, 3:30 pm and 6:30 pm. I also took some pictures, as shown below.
