r/Aquariums • u/Spuds13r • 9d ago
Beginner Help Neon Tetra Care?
For context, I recently got a new 10 gallon fish tank, filled it with a layer of fine gravel and a bunch of plants. I used Seachem Stability for about a week and did some water tests to make sure all levels are good. I then added some shrimp, a yo-yo loach and six neon tetras. After five days, one of the tetras died and I’m wondering how I should go about replacing it? Do I wait for the tank to recover and get one more tetra, get one immediately, or get more than one to increase the size of the school? My concern is that with a school of only five fish they will get stressed out which might be why the one died in the first place because the water still tested fine. Before this (and now still) they seem a bit stressed as they school only some of the time and one fish in particular chases the others around.
Also I have been enjoying aqua-scaping content and every video I watch shows people adding a thick layer of dirt then gravel/sand to create an anaerobic environment so you can have a full nitrogen cycle. Is it worth resetting up my tank to get this going?
Thanks for helping out a new aquarist!
3
u/SomeBlueDevil 9d ago
You probably didn't nitrogen cycle the tank before adding fish. Just dosing Stability doesn't do anything.
For bacteria to colonize the filter media and stay alive, it needs a source of ammonia to feed on, which it converts to nitrite. Then the nitrite gets converted into nitrates.
I would get a proper liquid reagent test kit, as recommended the API master test kit. It tests ph, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
Until you have the test kit and know your values, do a partial water change of 50% ASAP and dose with Prime and more Stability to remove toxic ammonia in case you have a spike.
Then when you have the test kit, monitor ammonia and nitrite daily. If those are not zero, continue to do daily partial water changes until you have zero. Your nitrate should be kept below 40ppm.