Hi all,
So here's the situation. I've had a small 5-gallon tank up and running for about a year now. It has one anubias on a piece of drift and one amazon sword and three little blue-eyed rainbows that are doing fine. But, it doesn't have planted gravel, and I decided I wanted to do a larger, heavily planted tank that would also hold more fish.
I saw a 16-gallon Tetra starter-kit on sale for very cheap, and bought it thinking it was a great deal. I know the filtration is not super-powerful (tetra whisper 10i) and the lightning isn't terribly strong (T8 15w Flourescent), but I thought I would see how everything went.
I added two java fern mats, some more anubias tied to driftwood, a crypt, two amazon swords, an aponogeton bulb, and some anacharis. I cycled fishlessly, using an old filter pad from my 5-gallon to jump-start the cycle, everything was growing GREAT, I waited until my ammonia and nitrites tested 0, and then I added two female guppies. Everything was going great for a few days, then I went away for the weekend...
When I came back, all of my anacharis was dead, as was my crypt, my fish, my aponogeton has died since then and my amazon swords have been slowly dying. My roommate, who was in charge of looking after the tank (but I told her she didn't need to feed it), was kind enough to have removed the dead fish before I got back.
That was about two weeks ago. I keep doing water changes but my Ph won't stay stable, any plants I try to add die (I tried to add anacharis again and it basically died right away, as did some hornwort I tried to add), and the water keeps becoming cloudy, even after I do enough water changes to make it clear again. Any ideas what happened?? It's possible she forgot to turn the light on for one of the days I was away, but I can't imagine that would have caused all of this. And what can I do? should I drain all of the water, toss all the plants that aren't doing well, and start from scratch?
THANK YOU to anyone who read all of that and gives me a response.
So here's the situation. I've had a small 5-gallon tank up and running for about a year now. It has one anubias on a piece of drift and one amazon sword and three little blue-eyed rainbows that are doing fine. But, it doesn't have planted gravel, and I decided I wanted to do a larger, heavily planted tank that would also hold more fish.
I saw a 16-gallon Tetra starter-kit on sale for very cheap, and bought it thinking it was a great deal. I know the filtration is not super-powerful (tetra whisper 10i) and the lightning isn't terribly strong (T8 15w Flourescent), but I thought I would see how everything went.
I added two java fern mats, some more anubias tied to driftwood, a crypt, two amazon swords, an aponogeton bulb, and some anacharis. I cycled fishlessly, using an old filter pad from my 5-gallon to jump-start the cycle, everything was growing GREAT, I waited until my ammonia and nitrites tested 0, and then I added two female guppies. Everything was going great for a few days, then I went away for the weekend...
When I came back, all of my anacharis was dead, as was my crypt, my fish, my aponogeton has died since then and my amazon swords have been slowly dying. My roommate, who was in charge of looking after the tank (but I told her she didn't need to feed it), was kind enough to have removed the dead fish before I got back.
That was about two weeks ago. I keep doing water changes but my Ph won't stay stable, any plants I try to add die (I tried to add anacharis again and it basically died right away, as did some hornwort I tried to add), and the water keeps becoming cloudy, even after I do enough water changes to make it clear again. Any ideas what happened?? It's possible she forgot to turn the light on for one of the days I was away, but I can't imagine that would have caused all of this. And what can I do? should I drain all of the water, toss all the plants that aren't doing well, and start from scratch?
THANK YOU to anyone who read all of that and gives me a response.
