sammbaxter
Aquarium Advice Regular
Okay so I had a fish tank up and running and a coworker of my brother had fish that he was looking to get rid of due to his moving into a smaller place, so he gave me four fish I've never had before, so I googled them, and turns out one is an electric yellow lab cichlid and the other three look like cichlids as well, identical to the electric yellow, but they do not have the black stripe on the fin. And they are only an inch and a half, maybe two inches long. My tank is only a ten gallon, and I know it's way too small but bare with me, I saved these fish from getting flushed down the drain, and I'm working on getting at least a 55 gallon tank by Christmas. So please don't cast all your negativity about cramping my fish into a puddle of water. I have never had cichlids before and I'm new to the whole water levels and testing stuff. But I bought a ph adjuster and now my ph is about 8.2 according to the test strip. My test strips have I think five different test squares. Ph, alkalinity, two nitrate squares (no3,no2) and then gh for water hardness. My nitrates are way too high and so I did a %50 water change, and now I have these microscopic white organism floating around my tank and crawling in the glass. My fish are definitely stressed. My electric yellow lab has black blotches everywhere and black stripes are appearing on his sides. I my other yellow cichlids don't run around the tank, they just sort of float in one spot, as if they're sleeping or lethargic. Also, they're not eating much at all. I have no idea how to adjust my nitrates, and I'm not a genius with the whole nitrogen cycle. Also. My water is super hard, and I don't know what sort of products to use to make it soft. Ive been storing jugs of water and letting it sit for days to use for my water changing, but does that help with the hardness of the water? Any help and advice would be much appreciated, thanks.
