help! dying cichlids!

[_Melissa_]

I have a 75g tank that was up for about 6 months and the fish were doing great then I had to move and we did a lot of research before we moved and were able to transport 3/4 of the tank water and only had down time of less than 2 hours. After 4 days of being up and running again we had a power outage while I was at work and the power was out for almost 6 hours and we lost 4 fish. We have lost fish every day since, 1-2 each day.

We went to our lfs and explained everything and they think we lost a lot of our bacteria because after the resetup we changed the filters because they were so clogged up they were overflowing our pump. They gave us some "dirty water" with their biological bacteria to put into our filter and tank (all of our fish are from this same lfs). Our ammonia is up because fish keep dying, we've done everything the lfs said to do, including adding buffer daily and not to do a water change so the bacteria can reform. But were still losing fish and I'm getting pretty upset because I feel like I'm flushing all my money down the toilet :-(

We have mostly peacocks and a few haps. We have a lemon jake which isn't looking too good right now, an insignis, tawain reef, regal peacock, albino red shoulder, mwanza, sunshine peacock, and a red empress which was our best looking fish and now has been barely hanging in there.

I'm really afraid ourtank is cycling, is there anything I can do to make them survive? Our ph hasn't budged with the daily buffer being added, its holding at 7.8. Our ammonia was up at about 2ppm and nitrates are at 10ppm. I know these readings are bad but I can't get them to change.

Please help!!

 

[sharkmom]

Did u get any thing to reduce your nirites or ammonia. To bring them down

 

[treasy]

Did u get any thing to reduce your nirites or ammonia. To bring them down

I would dose with prime right away to detoxify ammonia and nitrites. I would also purchase a big bottle of tetra safe start (amazon carries it up to 70 gallons) and pour it into your filter. I've had great success with the product, it has cycled 2 of my tanks in less than 4 days.


Do you happen to know your water parameters? Preferably for both before the move, and after the move.

 

[Shane83]

Gee whiz. I'm sorry to hear about all the problems you are having. Here is what I think you should do. Your number one concern is to detoxify or remove the ammonia. I don't care what your lfs guy says, there is really no excuse for subjecting your fish to high levels of ammonia. You need to buy a bio booster straight away and perform some decent water changes. I would also suggest stopping use of the alkaline buffer also since ammonia is much more toxic at higher pH. Your fish will much prefer swimming at the wrong pH for awhile (say tap water, which is hopefully mid 7's) than they will being subjected to high levels of toxic ammonia. Your tank will slowly re cycle itself anyway if that is in fact what it is doing, but the most important thing is to give the fish clean water. You need to remove any dead fish immediately and perform partial water changes.

 

[Mogurako]

Your fish are most likely suffering from ammo poisoning.

When you say chaining filters do you mean the filter pads in a hang on back filter?! It sounds like you hade a ammonia spike/mini cycle caused by the changing of the filters.

I hate to say it but the advice your LFS is terrible. In your case you want to do as many water changes as it takes to keep your ammo below .25, bacteria live in your substrate, on decor and in your filter not the water.

Stop using that buffer it's only stressing out the fish and making things worse. I never add any kind of water buffer that isn't natural. The only thing I used is crushed coral/aragonite sand to raise ph and peat/ drift wood to lower ph. Also ph for Africans unless wild caught doesn't really matter, most important thing is it's stable.

Get yourself some prime and start your water changes and you should see a marked improvement in your fish. Depending on how many fish you have in the tank be prepared to do 40-75% daily PWC to keep the ammo down.

Skip the tetra safe start and any other additives the only thing that should be going into your tank in prime and fresh water.

 

[_Melissa_]

Yes the filter pads were both changed because of the move they were so overloaded they were backing up the pump.

I had been putting in stress coat and stress zyme to help boost the bacteria with no luck. I am getting prime today on my lunch break. All I had was seachem's stabilty from when we started the tank, I put some in late last night in hopes to keep what fish we have left from dying as well and so far we haven't lost any in more than 15 hours. I also stopped the buffer yesterday.

The empress beat himself up pretty bad by flashing, his tail and right side are pretty scraped up, can I put melafix in or should I wait till everything else is straightened out? Or is there something else to treat him with?

 

[_Melissa_]

And I had been using kordons amquel plus as we always had to bring down the ammonia but it did nothing.

 

[steez]

Yes the filter pads were both changed because of the move they were so overloaded they were backing up the pump.

I had been putting in stress coat and stress zyme to help boost the bacteria with no luck. I am getting prime today on my lunch break. All I had was seachem's stabilty from when we started the tank, I put some in late last night in hopes to keep what fish we have left from dying as well and so far we haven't lost any in more than 15 hours. I also stopped the buffer yesterday.

The empress beat himself up pretty bad by flashing, his tail and right side are pretty scraped up, can I put melafix in or should I wait till everything else is straightened out? Or is there something else to treat him with?

You don't change filter pads. If they are getting clogged up you just rinse them in old tank water. By replacing these you are removing all the bacteria that has built up.

I would stop adding a bunch of chemicals to the tank. The only things you need are clean water, a conditioner and a good test kit.

You have to be patient and allow the nitrogen cycle to finish again with the new filters, you will have to test your water daily and do water changes. You want 0ppm Ammonia, 0ppm NitrIte and <20ppm NitrAte.

Good water conditions will be more beneficial than adding 2-3 chemicals to the tank.