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my sister and brother both had small tanks in their rooms, and their stock was as follows:

sister's tank: 1 male betta, 1 bumblebee goby, 2 male guppies.
brother's tank: 1 silver shark, 2 platies and 3 guppies.

as of today the only fish left is 1 platy, and we have no clear idea as to why and was wondering whether you could help out. i think i have an idea of why my brother's fish died, some was from the cold as he didnt get a heater til a day or two after he got the fish, but the platy died after the heater was in and working, but this morning i noticed there was a lot of excess food in there, and then checked the parameters and they were: ph-7.6, ammonia-0, nitrite-5, nitrate 10-20...now could the nitrite and nitrate levels have killed this fish?

my sister's tank is a different story however, her parameters were ph-7.6, ammonia-0, nitrite-0, nitrate-0. her tank is slightly smaller and the heater was touching the rocks, could this have caused something like an electric current in the water? thats my guess as to the problem. one of the guppies looked like it had fin rot (edges of the tail was black, and parts of its tail was missing), however was a pond guppy that died first (which can live through winter in an outside pond, meaning their hardy little fish!), then the betta, then the fin rot guppy, then the goby (all within about 24 hours). but it was the betta that made it weird, its tail lost colour (it was blue), and it got these white burn looking things all over its tail and body. he didnt die for ages, we saw him and put him in a bowl thinking he would be dead in minutes, but he was alive for about another 12 hours..but all he did was sorta float near the top almost vertically, and sometimes go down to the bottom, and looked like he had trouble swimming, and he didnt eat.

now i know there's nothing that can be done now, i havent got anything to treat the nitrite/nitrate levels in my brother's tank (and the nearest LFS is 60km away), but i did do a water change and gravel vac. but i was just curious if anyone had an idea of what caused their deaths, so we can try and prevent it happening in the future

What size are the tanks?

were they cycled before adding the fish?

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Truth doesn't always win friends but it influences them

my sister's tank is 7L and my brother's is about 10L.

my brother's tank wasnt cycled, but my sisters was.

I suspect the fishes died bcos of new tank sydrome - ammonia spike!

really? my sister's had been living in there for a couple of weeks, it was only since the heater was put in a couple of days ago that the fish started dying. maybe it was the sudden change in temp?

im pretty sure the cold killed my brother's fish, because they went from heated pet shop tanks to an unheated tank