So I got 3 Chinese Algae Eaters about a month ago to help my gold fish tank. The lady at the pet store said they would be perfect. The advertising sign also said they can live in 68'F water.

So of course in my mind I'm like "Perfect!"

Got them home, no problems for the first few days. Then I notice they are not as active, always on the bottom, not sucking on the walls.

During a water change I found one dead :( after moving more decorations the other two were belly up gills going 1,000MPH!

I quickly removed them and put them in the cup my Betta fish came in, put the lid on and placed them inside my betta tank where he has a heater. (probably 75ish)

It took them a day or so but now they are up right and seem to be going back to what they were doing before. There are only two now and they are living in a 1 gal tank with a bubbler. No heater or filter.


My questions are:

Was it cold shock they suffered in the gold fish tank?

Will they be ok in the 1 gal?

The 1gal stays around 70ish, do the need a heater?

Probably was either cold shock or toxic water, depending on the size tank and amount of fish as well as filter, you might have a very toxic tank with ammonia and nitrite. However, cold shock would also explain what happened, test your water, if your water is fine then it was the tank being cold. If you want to keep them you are going to need a filter to get rid of the waste, only very experianced fish keepers like yasher keep fish without filters, also i recomend a much bigger tank, at least a 10 gal. as far as water temp i would say most fish like the water like 75 degrees.