Concerns about African Cichlid

Question
Hello, My husband and I have a 46 gallon tank with 7 African cichlids, 2 algae eaters, and 1 catfish. We have had our tank for about a year and some months. We have had them since they were babies and maintained them. Today we changed our water in our tank and we took a little over half of the water out, as well as all of the props in the tank, and we took the heater out to do a good cleaning. We usually take about half of the water out and replace with fresh water. When we took the water out today and put fresh water in we noticed all of the fish were not there selves. They are still breathing but its almost like they are struggling, three of the African cichlids died. Some of them are just laying at the bottom but still breathing and some of them are swimming normal. As I am writing they are dropping like flys. My question to you is do you think they are going to survive? How can we keep them alive? How often should we change the water?

Answer
Hi Sarah,
That is unusual. African cichlids are usually quite hardy.

The number one thing you should make sure of is did you make sure you added water conditioner to the new water? This may seem silly to ask but many times before aquarists would have forgotten this vital thing.

What it sounds like is your poor cichlids are reacting badly to something in their water. So make sure you did add water conditioner and enough of it. And consider if your water (even the tap water) has ammonia in it. Test for it if you can. The easiest solution for ammonia in your tap water is using a water conditioner like Amquel+ or Prime that removes ammonia as well as all the other important chemicals.

Also did you make sure to never use any kind of chemicals or anything that may have had a chemical on it at one time when cleaning the tank?

I hope you don't loose all your fish. I'm sorry to hear about your fish trouble. Best wishes,
Karen~