honey-lovin
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
i have found time to get on this great forum again (i hope i am posting in the right place now and that the fantastic people that commented on my last post can find it here 
)
Starting with basic information about my tank i have a 210 liter tank (4ft in length) a large aqua one internal filter, large air stone (30 cm) a 300watt heater, a few plants here and there plus a few ornaments.
i have had the aquarium set up for tropical fish for roughly the last 5 months. (i have had the tank itself) for a lot longer with 5 gold fish (comets) and a medium sized axolotl.
Before i started setting up the tank for tropical conditions i moved house and thus removed roughly 80% of the water to actually move the tank. Shortly after my axolotl died and I decided that I wanted to look at keep other much smaller fish, so I moved my very large comets into our new pond and started changing the tank for tropical conditions. Did a 40% water change and let it “filter” with nothing in it for a few weeks.
At this stage being honest I had very little/no information on ammonia, nitrites nitrates, GH and phosphates so didn’t test for any.
i started doing research into tropical and bought myself the 300watt heater… within a fortnight I had bought 4 lyre tail mollies (of which one pregnant female died...id say within the first 7 days) i still have my male and two females up to this day and all are looking healthy. (also in addition to the 3 surviving mollies i bought another female to even out the ratios)
after seeing that my mollies were happily swimming around enjoying the 210 liters of water space I thought I would start adding platys ( a grand total of 9 over a 3 week period)
a little after that I bought a couple more and it wasn’t until I had the following fish in the tank that they started dieing:
3 female lyre tail mollies
1 male lyre tail mollie
6 female platys
3 male platys
1 clown loach
3 female guppies
3 bristle noses
2 peppered catfish
1 (unknown zebra fish that was donated to me by a friend)
of which the following have died
2 female platys
1 male platy
3 pregnant guppies
1 tiny bristle nose
And to my surprise, one or two have given birth to 5 babies which I was able to catch and keep alive in a pen (they look nice and healthy)
Anyway, enough history my water conditions were as I said tested by a local pet store and they informed me that my nitrates where very low, nitrites were very low and also my ammonia was very low ( I wrote that they were at 0 in my last post but some of you kindly replied that they cant ever be at 0) as for my phosphates they sat at 10 so I bought anti phosphate media to put inside one section of my internal filter and have kept it going 24/7 since the purchase.
My ph level sits about 7 to 7.4 which should be alright for my fish. Also there have been no visible signs of algae growth or white spot which seems to be a very common cause of death… the only thing I noticed was a white haze/cloudy trait to the water, just about the time the first fish died. I performed a 50% water change and went on to do 20-30%
Water changes every 3-4 days till the water was no longer cloudy. And have gone back to doing 30% water changes once a week along with ph tests.
MY QUESTIONS:
Firstly is it possible that my fish are some how suffocating somehow. I ask because that appears to be the only symptom the fish have shown 24 hours before dieing. They have been separating themselves from the “pack” and just wallowing on there own for a day or so as if they had absolutely no energy and were suffocating… sometimes coming up to the surface to gasp air and eat.
Second question: could it be that the zebra fish brought some sort of illness with it? At first it was a completely white fish when it was introduced and then had blue and silver/gold stripes come back within a week or so… it has not shown any signs of illness since I have had it.
Third: Is there any kind of algae that cannot be seen within the water itself… one of my plants has a black growth on it ( I thought of black beard but the growth on my plants was literally just like a mossy cover rather then fluffy wispy growth like black beard is)
Fourth: Is it worth my while to buy a five in one “dip stick” test kit that tests for ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, GH etc.?
I hope that my biography of my aquarium has stated every detail needed to diagnose my problem.
Thanks very much to the people that commented the first time round and the people have just read this post
)Starting with basic information about my tank i have a 210 liter tank (4ft in length) a large aqua one internal filter, large air stone (30 cm) a 300watt heater, a few plants here and there plus a few ornaments.
i have had the aquarium set up for tropical fish for roughly the last 5 months. (i have had the tank itself) for a lot longer with 5 gold fish (comets) and a medium sized axolotl.
Before i started setting up the tank for tropical conditions i moved house and thus removed roughly 80% of the water to actually move the tank. Shortly after my axolotl died and I decided that I wanted to look at keep other much smaller fish, so I moved my very large comets into our new pond and started changing the tank for tropical conditions. Did a 40% water change and let it “filter” with nothing in it for a few weeks.
At this stage being honest I had very little/no information on ammonia, nitrites nitrates, GH and phosphates so didn’t test for any.
i started doing research into tropical and bought myself the 300watt heater… within a fortnight I had bought 4 lyre tail mollies (of which one pregnant female died...id say within the first 7 days) i still have my male and two females up to this day and all are looking healthy. (also in addition to the 3 surviving mollies i bought another female to even out the ratios)
after seeing that my mollies were happily swimming around enjoying the 210 liters of water space I thought I would start adding platys ( a grand total of 9 over a 3 week period)
a little after that I bought a couple more and it wasn’t until I had the following fish in the tank that they started dieing:
3 female lyre tail mollies
1 male lyre tail mollie
6 female platys
3 male platys
1 clown loach
3 female guppies
3 bristle noses
2 peppered catfish
1 (unknown zebra fish that was donated to me by a friend)
of which the following have died
2 female platys
1 male platy
3 pregnant guppies
1 tiny bristle nose
And to my surprise, one or two have given birth to 5 babies which I was able to catch and keep alive in a pen (they look nice and healthy)
Anyway, enough history my water conditions were as I said tested by a local pet store and they informed me that my nitrates where very low, nitrites were very low and also my ammonia was very low ( I wrote that they were at 0 in my last post but some of you kindly replied that they cant ever be at 0) as for my phosphates they sat at 10 so I bought anti phosphate media to put inside one section of my internal filter and have kept it going 24/7 since the purchase.
My ph level sits about 7 to 7.4 which should be alright for my fish. Also there have been no visible signs of algae growth or white spot which seems to be a very common cause of death… the only thing I noticed was a white haze/cloudy trait to the water, just about the time the first fish died. I performed a 50% water change and went on to do 20-30%
Water changes every 3-4 days till the water was no longer cloudy. And have gone back to doing 30% water changes once a week along with ph tests.
MY QUESTIONS:
Firstly is it possible that my fish are some how suffocating somehow. I ask because that appears to be the only symptom the fish have shown 24 hours before dieing. They have been separating themselves from the “pack” and just wallowing on there own for a day or so as if they had absolutely no energy and were suffocating… sometimes coming up to the surface to gasp air and eat.
Second question: could it be that the zebra fish brought some sort of illness with it? At first it was a completely white fish when it was introduced and then had blue and silver/gold stripes come back within a week or so… it has not shown any signs of illness since I have had it.
Third: Is there any kind of algae that cannot be seen within the water itself… one of my plants has a black growth on it ( I thought of black beard but the growth on my plants was literally just like a mossy cover rather then fluffy wispy growth like black beard is)
Fourth: Is it worth my while to buy a five in one “dip stick” test kit that tests for ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, GH etc.?
I hope that my biography of my aquarium has stated every detail needed to diagnose my problem.
Thanks very much to the people that commented the first time round and the people have just read this post
