Slowly loosing fish

[Tbox]

I'm thinking you may have a tough crew of cichlids from different regions(African, South and Central American) living together. That will not work long term. It is impossible to ID a cichlid from description alone. Hukit will need a pic of each fish for identifacation

Sounds like you are working hard at this. From what I can tell, all the other specs look good. Also, don't be over cleaning your filter. You will cause 'mini cycles' which will result in ammonia spikes. Never use tap water either when you have to do filter maintenance as that will kill the BB that are established.

 

[austinsheeler]

ok so what do i use when cleaning the filter? What is a BB? and i cleaned the filter 2 times since i bought it. i cleaned it after i set it up for about 6 months it was used. then i cleaned it out with tap water thoroughly with no water change. then i cleaned it in novemnber about 5 months later because i saw a lot of build up inside the filter walls cuz the cube is clear. Then i was having all these problems so i did it again in febuary but normally i used to change it about twice a year. does this seem right for cichlids?

and i was thinking of buying a few more fish. i wanted to breed either some yellow labs or the red zebras and the parrot colored fish i described. i have a male of each fish.

 

[HUKIT]

If there has been no new additions to the tank since new your simply dealing with maturing fish turning aggressive, disease generally don't stay dormant for months upon months at a time. There are reasons why there are general stocking guidelines when caring for rift lake cichlids, when you stock incompatable fish in a small glass box bad things happen. So my two questions are,

Has there been any new additions in the last year?
What was your water parameters and change schedule prior to seeing deaths?

 

[austinsheeler]

i used to change the water before the deaths usually every 2-3 weeks and i was only chabging about 10-15 gallons at a time of the 75 gallon tank. all the fish in the tank are the original fish with no new additions except for a rock i added. but no fish. and im not sure how the water was before the tests. i brought it to a few different stores and they said the water quality seemed good to add new fish but i never did cuz something was wrong and they did not have answers. and when i say original fish to the tank i bought them abut 5-7 at a time for about a 2 month span bout 1 every week or every other week. i got a cheaper fish who was a killer and killed most of the expensive ones so i returned him.

If you would like pics of the fish i can get them for you. but all the fish seem to get along pretty well for now. they are abut 2-4 inches now. mostly 2and 3. i have one bigger fish. they are all in the pics on page 2 of this forum. let me know if you need any more info tho. thanks so much for your guys help.

 

[Tbox]

Don't buy any more fish until you know exactly what you already have.

BB is beneficial bacteria that is colonized in your filtration media until you thoroughly cleaned it with tap water. That's ok, you won't do that again. If necessary, when you do a PWC(partial water change) just rinse in a bucket of the water you just removed from the aquarium, no more scrubbing.
I'm getting a fluval canister 205 next week. I've been running a HOB(hang on back) for 2yrs, but I need more filtration now. The canister just has better levels of media filtration.

 

[austinsheeler]

oh nice. ok yea i have heard of that.. i didnt really scrub any of it. just a rinse with hot hot water. but yea its basically the same. okay thanks for the tip. what about the foam parts of the filter at the bottom of the cube. they get really saturated with brown crap. swashing them around in a 5 gal bucket wont get them clean. am i supposed to buy new ones?

 

[Tbox]

There are some great how to vids on the tube!