Long beginner(?) questions

[cassie]

Let's pretend I'm a newbie and ignore the fact that I've spent the past two years committing fishicide without quite knowing how I've done it. I really, really want to do this right so here come lots of stupid newbie questions.

OK, for starters...I have a 30 gallon tank. What kind of filtration would be best? I'm thinking about one of the Marineland Emperor 400s with the biowheel. Would this be a good plan? Is there some other option I should consider? If I go with the Emperor (or pretty much any other kind of filter except the crummy one that came with the tank that you can't put anything except the stupid carbon filter into) what kind of filter media would I want to use in addition to the floss and carbon filters that will be in it? It has room for up to two additional media types. Bear in mind that algae has been a HUGE problem for the past two years; brown, green, hair, beard, you name it, it's shown up in this tank before I took it down.

Secondly...would you recommend a fishless cycle or the old fashioned cycle method with one or two fish and adding slowly? I've read up and understand how the fishless cycle works but I've never done it. I've never had casualties in the old way, but if there's a good reason to do the fishless I'm game.

Thirdly...I want this to be a tetra tank. I know they produce a pretty light bio-load. Would light overstocking down the road be a big problem? Obviously I'm not talking immediately but I'd really like one school of six more than the one inch per gallon rule would allow for. We're talking about an adult school size of 7.5" more. I wouldn't think this would be a huge issue considering how "clean" tetras are but so far my knowledge and judgment hasn't served me very well so I'd like other opinions.

Fourth...what can I do besides great water parameters to keep these guys healthy long-term? I swear, for two years my master test kit (not the strip kind; the kind with the bottles and the test tubes) has reflected good water parameters. Slight ammonia and nitrite spikes when new fish were added that quickly leveled back down to zero. Nitrates were slightly high at around 40 ppm despite weekly 20% water changes. Ph was stable, alkalinity moderate which was ideal for the fish in the tank. And yet there were persistent problems with algae and fish dying. Deaths took three distinct forms that would erupt in cycles...erratic swimming until the poor little buggers keeled over (possible swim bladder problems?); cysts that looked like whiteheads erupting on the body near the caudnal fin, lethargy, loss of appetite, and self-segregation leading to slow, painful death if not euthanized; and MFD (mysterious fish disappearance) which only happened twice but I flat can't explain either as the tank was well sealed and everywhere was checked when they disappeared yet no corpse could be found.

It might help to add here that my "nearest" LFS is five and a half hours away unless you count the chain pet place that's an hour away, which I don't because their tanks, about six months into my aquaria odyssey, became disgusting with obviously diseased fish and floaters left for nibbling for days. Hence, it was never really practical for me to take dead fish in for autopsy of whatever, nor to take them in when they were just sick. For the same reason, I rarely add fish to the tank more than three times a year at most, and usually less than that. I have no problem with my tank building very, very slowly, but if that might be a factor in my lack of success, please say so.

Anyway, I know this is long but it seemed easiest to ask all my questions in one post instead of dragging it out. TIA for any help or advice anybody can offer.

 

[MyCatsDrool]

Sounds like your main problem was that you got stuck in a cycle of Ich.


And it never died, because you didn't know how to kill it.

Read the Ich stickie on the top of the Unhealthy fish board.

 

[JDogg]

Let's pretend I'm a newbie and ignore the fact that I've spent the past two years committing fishicide without quite knowing how I've done it. I really, really want to do this right so here come lots of stupid newbie questions.

OK, for starters...I have a 30 gallon tank. What kind of filtration would be best? I'm thinking about one of the Marineland Emperor 400s with the biowheel. Would this be a good plan? Is there some other option I should consider? If I go with the Emperor (or pretty much any other kind of filter except the crummy one that came with the tank that you can't put anything except the stupid carbon filter into) what kind of filter media would I want to use in addition to the floss and carbon filters that will be in it? It has room for up to two additional media types. Bear in mind that algae has been a HUGE problem for the past two years; brown, green, hair, beard, you name it, it's shown up in this tank before I took it down.

the filter should be in…maybe try some more biological media like bio-balls or rings or something…

Secondly...would you recommend a fishless cycle or the old fashioned cycle method with one or two fish and adding slowly?

fishless, don’t kill more fish :?

I've read up and understand how the fishless cycle works but I've never done it. I've never had casualties in the old way, but if there's a good reason to do the fishless I'm game.

Thirdly...I want this to be a tetra tank. I know they produce a pretty light bio-load. Would light overstocking down the road be a big problem? Obviously I'm not talking immediately but I'd really like one school of six more than the one inch per gallon rule would allow for. We're talking about an adult school size of 7.5" more.

what species are we talking about here?

I wouldn't think this would be a huge issue considering how "clean" tetras are but so far my knowledge and judgment hasn't served me very well so I'd like other opinions.

Fourth...what can I do besides great water parameters to keep these guys healthy long-term? I swear, for two years my master test kit (not the strip kind; the kind with the bottles and the test tubes) has reflected good water parameters. Slight ammonia and nitrite spikes when new fish were added that quickly leveled back down to zero. Nitrates were slightly high at around 40 ppm despite weekly 20% water changes.

do 50% weekly changes. get the nitrates down to 10 or so unless you have live plants

Ph was stable, alkalinity moderate which was ideal for the fish in the tank. And yet there were persistent problems with algae and fish dying. Deaths took three distinct forms that would erupt in cycles...erratic swimming until the poor little buggers keeled over (possible swim bladder problems?); cysts that looked like whiteheads erupting on the body near the caudnal fin, lethargy, loss of appetite, and self-segregation leading to slow, painful death if not euthanized; and MFD (mysterious fish disappearance) which only happened twice but I flat can't explain either as the tank was well sealed and everywhere was checked when they disappeared yet no corpse could be found.

It might help to add here that my "nearest" LFS is five and a half hours away unless you count the chain pet place that's an hour away, which I don't because their tanks, about six months into my aquaria odyssey, became disgusting with obviously diseased fish and floaters left for nibbling for days. Hence, it was never really practical for me to take dead fish in for autopsy of whatever, nor to take them in when they were just sick. For the same reason, I rarely add fish to the tank more than three times a year at most, and usually less than that. I have no problem with my tank building very, very slowly, but if that might be a factor in my lack of success, please say so.

Anyway, I know this is long but it seemed easiest to ask all my questions in one post instead of dragging it out. TIA for any help or advice anybody can offer.

#1 question: describe in detail your pwc process…where does the water come from, how do you add it, do you add anything to the water?

 

[roka64]

WELCOME TO AA!!!

Please do not cycle your tank with live animals.

Theck this page for great Articles http://www.aquariumadvice.com/article_cat.php?fldAuto=2.
I would read up on How ammonia is converted to nitrate, How to cycle your tank with out the use of fish, Freshwater Ich? Yuck!
What it is, and what you can do about it by: Allivymar, Making Tap Water Safe for the Aquarium by Removing Chlorine and Chloramine
By QTOFFER and I think you will understand a little better what is going on in your tank.

 

[cassie]

Thanks so much for the advice, guys! I will definitely do the fishless cycle process this time around.

As far as the illnesses/deaths being ich, I don't think so. Aside from the lethargy and loss of appetite, there were no signs or symptoms of ich and those are common symptoms of many illnesses from what I understand. But when I mentioned the white-head looking thing, it wasn't the salted look that you get with ich. It looked more like....I'm not sure how to explain it any better than a whitehead or a boil looking thing. It looked like something that, if it were on a human, you could squeeze and get pus out of. I did get ich in the quarantine tank once thanks to a pity purchase but it was treated immediately with malachite green and raising the temp. These other issues, as I said, didn't have the salted look, nor did the fish flash or shimmy or show any similar signs of distress. When I mention erratic swimming what I mean is more along the lines of the fish seeming to have difficulty staying "afloat" in the water, resting more on the bottom, and eventually a couple even ended up for a little while swimming upside down or resting upside down in the bottom of the quarantine tank before death.

As far as my pwc, the process I go through is pretty simple. I use a gravel vac style siphon to vac 1/3 of the gravel on a rotating basis and remove 20% of the water into a bucket. I use the water in the bucket to rinse the carbon filter if necessary. Then refill with room temperature RO water that has the recommended dosage of RO Right added. I always test the RO water before adding it back in for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, chlorine, and chloramine because I'm paranoid that way.

As for why I use RO water rather than my own tap water treated for chlorine and chloramine, if you ever saw the parameters of water out of my tap you'd understand. I live in an area where the water is so hard that it's very common for adults bred on local water to have calcium deposits on their teeth, not to mention the fact that ammonia in my tap water is around 3 ppm. It's pretty hideous water, in fact, I noticed recently when looking for information on brackish aquariums that I could almost use my tap water as is for one! When I talked to the guys at my "L"FS about it, they suggested the RO and RO Right and said it was what they used at their store, as well. After reading up on it online it seemed like the best option, all considered, even though it might be slightly chancy.

Oh, and as for what particular species of tetras I'm interested in, I was thinking long-finned serapaes, black phantoms, emperors, and lemons. I've had serapaes and black phantoms before and really enjoyed them until they died. In fact, they were the ones that lasted the longest. They were the second and fourth additions to the tank (respectively) and last to die, several months after the last of the others went belly-up. They were so enjoyable to watch and so beautiful, that's really what made me think that if I started the tank up again, I would like to do it with just tetras. Despite warnings that the serapaes could be slightly aggressive at times, mine were timid as lambs and quite beautiful.

 

[7Enigma]

Here's my thoughts:

-If you want to avoid the larger and more frequent PWC's keep your stocking level in line with the tank size. There's no reason to feel guilty if you don't want or have time to do larger more frequent PWC's, you just have to stock less then or use other methods of nitrAte removal.

-I'm partial to AquaClear HOB filters, but the Emperor line of filters is also very popular. Planning with tetras specifically, I would go with a larger filter than required for your tank. They are small and streamlined so a little current will not bother them, and water turnover in a tank is one of the most important things you can have. It will convert ammonia quicker, keep O2 levels high, and prevent dead spots in the tank that can lead to algae outbreaks and ultimately disease. For reference, I run an AC50 filter on my 20 gallon tank. That is a filter rated for a 50 gallon tank (it probably can't actually filter quite that large of a tank, but its definitely more than I need). There's added comfort in knowing I have more surface area for bacteria to live, and have good turnover.

-Even using the RO water I would still use a product like Prime. It is very inexpensive, lasts near forever (I JUST ran out of a 250ml bottle after over a YEAR with a planted 20 gallon that got weekly 50% PWC's and a 10 gallon QT I've now had for a couple months with weekly 50% PWC as well), and is a good insurance policy against problems. The bottle was ~$5.

-One thing that you mentioned that sent up warning flags was that you are adding back in RT water. Unless you room is 78-82F, this is NOT GOOD. Massive shock can occur when your fish are exposed to drastically different temperatures, and this can lead to sickness symptoms that you described (especially the erratic swimming). Remember that water has a heat capacity ~600 times that of air. That means hot water holds a lot more "heat" than hot air, and likewise with cold water, it will sap the heat right out of something, and a small fish has a VERY high surface area to volume ratio, so its temp will drop to near ambient (the surrounding water), in a very short time. You need to make sure any water being added back in is identical in temperature to your tank temp. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the cause of most of your problems. Kudo's to JDogg for asking the question above as sometimes its the simple little things that can cause complex problems.

HTH

 

[STARFYRE]

FIRST QUESTION: Personally, I love the biowheel filters. I think it's a great choice to go with that and upgrade the filter to the 400 size. I did that with my 3 bigger FW tanks, and have had much success. I don't add any other media in the filter. When changing filters, I change one at a time to ensure the beneficial bacteria is still plentiful.
SECOND QUESTION: When I started my first aquarium, I had no idea there was a fishless cycle. It was suggested to me to cycle with hardy tetras. I used the same two pristella tetras to cycle four tanks. One is still alive, and it's two years past the last cycling. The other one recently passed away, and I think it's because my pleco ate it. (he ate several other fish in the tank)
THIRD: Considering the luck you have had in the past, I would not overstock your tank. There is a formula to see how many inches of fish you can successfully stock. I forget how to do the formula exactly, but it has something to do with measuring the length and width of the surface area. Although the 1 inch per gallon rule is a good basic guideline, the surface area is a major determinant of stocking size. Bioload is the other, which will increase as you add fish slowly, or you can adjust it from the beginning with the fishless cycle. I know that in my 29 gal, max is 36 inches of fish. My dimensions, I believe, are 30x12.
FOURTH question: Is sunlight hitting your tank at any time of the day? This could be an algae source. Also, how long are you keeping the lights on? Try some easy live plants. That will help suck up some of those nitrAtes. I would suggest some type of airstone in the tank, but if you're upgrading the filter unit, you may not need the extra water movement? I had similar problems with my first 10 gal goldfish tank years ago. I couldn't understand why my two goldfish in my 10 gal kept dying. It was because I was overstocking. As I mentioned before, lighten the load. This may be a factor as well. You can always set up a second tank, or third, or fourth.....
If matching water temps is a problem, this is what I do.....
I have a suction cup thermometer that also floats. I stick in in the tank I'm doing a PWC in for about 10-20 minutes. I put the bucket full of fresh water I will be using for the PWC in front of a space heater and drop the thermometer in there. The water in the bucket does not heat evenly. Usually the top of the water bucket heats first. After rinsing my hands very well and drying them, I swish the water around in the bucket till the temp feels even (about 20 seconds) and hold the thermometer by the rubber piece toward the bottom of the bucket for a couple seconds, and get a reading. The heating process with the space heater takes about a half hour, but it's worth it to not risk the ick, or shock the fish.

 

[7Enigma]

Another way would be to use scalding tap water to raise the temp of the RO water. This would obviously need to be done in a bucket prior to addition to the tank, and you would need to use a dechlorinator, but it would work nicely and you wouldn't need to wait a long time for the temp to raise. Also while I'm sure your water is not the greatest, a gallon or two out of 10-15 is not bad at all and you could probably completely stop using the RO Right product as a gallon or two of your tap would probably be more than enough to replenish the water. It would save you some cash.

 

[cassie]

Thanks! More to chew on here. I think I'll probably be going with the Emperor 400. It's rated for a 30-80 gallon tank with a 400 gph recycle rate, so I think it should be pretty adequate. Plus the two biowheels is a plus, IMO.

I never thought about the RT water being an issue, but it's certainly something I'll fix this time around using the steps recommended. I think I will stick with the RO, though. At least for now. I just have a lot of trouble imagining that my tap water, even with Prime, could be as good for them. The tap here tests at 3 ppm ammonia, 40 ppm nitrAte, 1 ppm nitrIte, 300 GH, 300 KH, 8.4 pH. And that's in the winter when algae bloom in the water isn't an issue so they're not overdosing it to swimming pool quality with chlorine. We're working on getting a whole-house RO system installed so you can bathe in the summer without your eyes burning like fire.

As to the algae problem in the tanks, they're getting almost nil natural sunlight. They're in our home theatre room which has blackout curtains over the one window in the room at all times. Like I said, though, my nitrAtes were almost always elevated and I've never tested for phosphates, which I read recently could be a contributor to algae issues as well. Plus, they're pretty low-light tanks with only one neon light per tank. I guess that's what I get for getting the el-cheapo tank kits from Walmart. I'm also wondering if the UGFs I had in them could have contributed to the problem. If the UGF had anything to do with it, that issue will be gone this time around as I've decided to ditch them. Hopefully, the better filter will help, too. And if I see nitrAtes going up at all, I'll increase volume and frequency of water changes immediately.

I think I'll take a wait-and-see approach to the stocking issue. Since I have to go so far for my fish anyway and only get a few at a time, I'll see how the tank is going when I'm ready to add more and decide then.

I'm more and more feeling like education is going to be the key. I grew up in a family where aquariums were just a fact of life and I've been doing things the way we did when I was a kid because that's just how it was done. But technology and knowledge have gone a long way since those 1970s and 80s tanks and I'm going to try to catch up and keep up. Hopefully this next batch of fish will be better for it.

 

[confusion]

The white spots you are describing is almost certainly columnaris - a bacteria infection.

The behavioral symptoms you described are pretty general symptoms, and can mean a lot of different things. If they happen some time after adding new fish, get yourself a QT to house the new fish for a few weeks before adding them into the main tank.

When you see behavioral problems, and so long as it isn't all of them at once, pull out the sick fish and put it into the QT. Do a large water change on the main tank. When fish become sick or die, other fish, almost no matter how peaceful, will start picking at them and eating them, getting infected with whatever killed or is making the first fish sick. Acting quickly when you see a problem is very important.

It's possible that the RO water is actually causing a lot of the stress that is leading to the illnesses. I've not used RO, but I do know that it completely lacks any minerals needed. Don't know much about RO right, but you might want to search around and find out what other people who are successfully using RO water use - like seachem trace, etc.

I would read up on the signs of various fish diseases, so you can better recognize them.

The other possible suggestion is to get a UV sterilizer and run that on your tank to kill off the bacteria that is making the fish sick. Most experienced fish keepers will poo poo this idea since you're not treating the root cause of the problem.

For filters, I am a big fan of redundancy and have grown to like canister filters much more than HOBs. I have 3 tanks, all have 2 RENA xp2 or xp3's, plus an HOB. I would recommed a pair of XP2's - maybe just starting off with one plaus your current filter. They are much much nicer than HOBs, in my opinion. Multiple filters will let you clean one and leave the other running, without worrying about damaging the bio filter.

I've never found temperature differences to be a problem when adding new water to a tank. I do tend to err on the side of adding colder water to the tank, but I've added water up to 8 or so degrees colder and you can watch the fish happily swimming in the stream of water. Not lost one fish because of that.