Dying fish help please!!!!!

[Amazonian13]

Hi there, need some urgent help. I just moved to new house and due to time constraints broke the golden rule of cycling. I had a 90 gallon with:
8 inch Peacock Ocellaris
8 Inch Flagtail Prochilodus
6 Inch Hi-Fin Wolfish
6 Inch Peacock Mono
9 Inch Tapajos Red Pike Cichlid Male
8 Inch Tapajos Red Pike Cichlid Female
6 Inch Tigrinus Catfish.
As said moved to new house and got a 150 gallon. I have always been ignorant of cycling and done bare minimum as never have had any issues over the years and cycled my 90 gallon after 2 days and never had any issues always add all the starter chemicals and stress coat etc. Anyway I set up the 150 gallon and let it cycle for 3 days. I had to get fish from other place and the ammonia had spiked on day 1.5, but last night was at 0 ppm and all other readings were ideal so I thought I was all good. Woke up this morning to my prize beautiful tigrinus dead as a doornail but untouched. QUickly took readings and ammonia had spiked to 8.00 ppm and Nitrate No2- at .25 ppm. Began dosing with ammolock, but no the readings still show up same so got no relief and fish seemed to be doing bad. I immediately did a 25 % water change and after two hours ammonia had dropped to 4.0 ppm so felt better and thought it would keep dropping. Came home hours later and my large 8 inch bass is clinging to the top of the tank gasping for air and all fish are gasping looking awful. Did another 25% change, but levels all read the same. Freaking out now as Bass looks awful and the female pike cichlid is looking very rough. Have no idea best thing to do. Switched from the bio wheels to all fluvals in this have a Fx5 and a 405 and thought with three days of that power it would be all good. Killing myself right now for breaking golden rule, but measured my tap with stress coat in it and it reads amonnia 0-.25 ppm so just did a 50 % change again now and bass is looking slightly better but not great. ANy ideas? am i completely screwed? lots of expensive fish that I love and have had a good while now. Is best thing just keep every hour or because it didnt cycle long enough is it just going to spike and spike and spike until there is enough bio filter built up? Any ideas? I have lots of ammolock, but worried of now overmedicating the water. Please any help I would appreciate. I can get a 75 and set it up with the old bio wheels to quarantine a few maybe? but really no other tanks on me. ANyway any help appreciated im miserable watching my fish suffer right now....

 

[Amazonian13]

attempts

Anyhow know this is bad time of night for lot of responses, but please let me know anything. I am using purigen and nitra zorb from the old tank in fluval and thought there was enough in their for bio filter but guess not. I just drove 30 minutes to the old apartment that I have for only one more day and grabbed the old marineland double bio wheel filter that was on their old 90 gallon and started it up on the new tank hoping this will help establish the old bio filter as now Im thinking thats the only thing Ive done differently than before was not have a big bio filter sample the same to new tank and was only able to add about 20 gallons (2 buckets worth of their old water to the new tank as I moved them all myself single handed) please let me know if you think any of this helps or keep water changes etc. any advice much appreciated

 

[Mumma.of.two]

The most important thing right now is getting the ammonia down as low as you can. Lots of back to back 50% changes will be needed right now. Unfortunately letting a tank sit with chemicals in it for a few days will do nothing for the cycle. Neither will adding old tank water. What happened to the old filter media?

Every day you are going to have to change large amounts of water to keep the ammonia down. Adding as much used (seeded) media you can get your hands in will help speed things up.

This article applies to your situation.
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/artic...g-but-I-already-have-fish-What-now/Page2.html

I would avoid all the chemicals you are adding. All you need is clean water and dechlorinator.

 

[Bbush]

Can you get some old gravel, ornaments, etc? I am no expert but it sounds like you are on top of it now. Any prime handy?

 

[Amazonian13]

Thanks

So just dropped three large ornaments and three smaller ones that I
Had removed which were in there old tank hope that might help and have
Their old biowheel on and running. Ammonia
Still testing at 4.0 but looks maybe tiny shade lighter. I have prime but should I add some still you think? I have been doing tons of water changes and will
Keep on repeating them, but now do I need to literally just keep empty filling empty filling till it reads lower or let biowheels run a little retest water change every few hours etc. ?

 

[Amazonian13]

Thanks for article too if that is really all I can do. I don't know why the ammonia levels aren't reading half after the wc though. It did drop from .8 clearly to .4 but now no big changes. Going to try getting gravel from the old tank and seeding it in the sock.

 

[Amazonian13]

So basically the reason the ammonia spiked so crazy when not cycled enough
With previous biofilter is that once adding fish even though levels were perfect,
There normal amount of waste / living energy wasn't broken down at all because the bacteria that usually does this in my old tanks and turns it to nitrate then no3 etc.
Were not present enough in the new tank? Do you know what level of ammonia is tolerable by my fish? I know any is bad and I must get it out but if I get it down to like .5 or .1 think they will be ok until morning and more water changes
Or really just wc wc wc ? Sorry so frantic but willing to
Do whatever

 

[Mumma.of.two]

So just dropped three large ornaments and three smaller ones that I
Had removed which were in there old tank hope that might help and have
Their old biowheel on and running. Ammonia
Still testing at 4.0 but looks maybe tiny shade lighter. I have prime but should I add some still you think? I have been doing tons of water changes and will
Keep on repeating them, but now do I need to literally just keep empty filling empty filling till it reads lower or let biowheels run a little retest water change every few hours etc. ?

Where the ornaments still wet from the old tank? If not the bacteria would be dead I'm sorry. Same with old media. If it was kept wet and not exposed to extreme temperatures it would still have live bacteria. Add a little extra prime with each water change. It will detoxify the ammonia up to 2ppm. Test the water two times a day then drop down to once a day once you have it under control.

Thanks for article too if that is really all I can do. I don't know why the ammonia levels aren't reading half after the wc though. It did drop from .8 clearly to .4 but now no big changes. Going to try getting gravel from the old tank and seeding it in the sock.

Same with the gravel. It will have to be still wet to be good.

So basically the reason the ammonia spiked so crazy when not cycled enough
With previous biofilter is that once adding fish even though levels were perfect,
There normal amount of waste / living energy wasn't broken down at all because the bacteria that usually does this in my old tanks and turns it to nitrate then no3 etc.
Were not present enough in the new tank? Do you know what level of ammonia is tolerable by my fish? I know any is bad and I must get it out but if I get it down to like .5 or .1 think they will be ok until morning and more water changes
Or really just wc wc wc ? Sorry so frantic but willing to
Do whatever

The reason the ammonia spikes is because there is not enough bacteria in the filter and tank to consume all the ammonia your fish produce. Adding a new filter to a tank without an ammonia source (fish) will result in 0 readings across the board. No fish = no ammonia = no cycle.

All you can do for now is WC WC WC until you can get it down. 0.5ppm is usually acceptable. At that point you can rely on the Prime to get the fish through the night. It lasts about 24 hours. You will have to check the water in the morning.

 

[Amazonian13]

Thanks so much putting some wet gravel in now and doing one more big change. Down to 2.0 ppm now thanks again

 

[Mumma.of.two]

You're doing good! Glad to help

 

[Bbush]

Awesome! Good luck!

 

[Amazonian13]

going well

Hey there, so after a number or wc and close monitoring and adding lots of old gravel etc. tank has been up now for 8 days and all levels have stayed perfect last 2 days so hoping all my bacteria colonies are well established in the two fluvals by now. Question for you all though, my two peacock bass who are usually gluttonous to the extreme seem to be barely eating now. The two pike cichlids and the wolf fish are ravenous as ever, but the bass barely seem to eat a fish and rarely peck at a pellet when usually they take down both willingly. Think this is just shyness from the move / recovering from the high ammonia still? are peacock bass maybe more susceptible to the stress or something? Any ideas? Not really worried because they are eating a little, but barely anything compared to their norm hunger level.

 

[Mumma.of.two]

Glad to here its going well! I don't know anything about bass but it is entirely possible they are still recovering from ammonia poisoning and/or burns and the move.