NEED HELP!!! I messed up...

[Irvids]

Hi everyone.... i had a 20 gallon tank and bought some RCS from a member here, everything was great, they bred like crazy and so proud that i decided to upgrade them from a 20 gallon to a 55 gallon.

I moved everything from the 20 to the 50. Media, rocks, decorations, rocks everything and transferred my 10 neon tetra's and then finally the 150+ RCS.

Woke up to find about 80 dead RCS but no dead neon tetra's. Day 2 i found even more dead RCS but no dead neon tetra's.

I did a water test to see what the FFFFFF was going on. PH is a steady 7.2-7.6,
Ammonia is practically 0.0, and nitrate and nitrites are were they are suppose to be.
temp is right at 76 degree's
water was conditioned



Whats going on, am i missing something, im so mad that i lost about 6 months of getting these little guys comfortable and breeding to just massacring them.

 

[Irvids]

There is only 1 change.... My girlfriend bought some gray rocks that i'll leave pictures below of. she said she bought them from home depot for ponds. They look awesome so i applied vinegar to see if they were acid, and baked them at 250 degree for about 30-35 min and placed them in the tank...

dont know if this is causing the sudden massacre for my RCS or could it be stress from the move....

 

[Irvids]

Here are some of the pictures i just snapped...

main tank

one shrimp that made it

perfectly fine tetra's

new rocks, maybe the problem ??

new rocks, maybe the problem too??

 

[Delapool]

Hi, the rocks look like slate to me and should be fine.

What are nitrite and nitrates? Just checking the tank hasn't un-cycled.

Another thought is was the old tank getting plenty of water changes? Just checking the water between the two would be similar as otherwise sounds good.

 

[Irvids]

I keep forgetting which one of those goes first lol but nitrite was 0.0 and nitrate was 30-40ppm which sounds normal to me (sorry if it's the other way around)

And those slates are fine? I did notice lastnight a slight little white powder on top of some of them which I scratched and seem to lift off.

Like I said b4 placing the. I did scrub them and placed them in the oven...

I'm still baffled and so dam sad to have almost my entire shrimp population gone.

 

[Delapool]

Water readings look good.

The rocks look fine, I can't pick anything. The white powder I don't know on - I assume you checked the rocks beforehand. You could try running some carbon just in case.

Also perhaps - how did you acclimatise them across tanks?

Does the water conditioner detoxify chloramines and heavy metals?

 

[Irvids]

That last part..

"Also perhaps - how did you acclimatise them across tanks?"

What do you mean by that, sorry didn't understand the question.

 

[Delapool]

Sure (it's late here).

How did you transfer and acclimatise from old tank to new tank eg catch and tip straight in or float in container of old tank water, gradually mixing with new tank water to let them adjust to new tank water?

 

[Irvids]

Hmmm, I actually filled the new tank with new tap water and then I inserted the fishes and shrimp then added the old tank water which was about 15 gallons, then I applied my de-chlorine.

So it was a lot more new water then the old one. And I tried to match the water temp but the new tank was slightly warmer since I removed the heater from the old tank

***edit- any other test that I can run that might show some underlining issues? I'm going to re-run the water test again and see if anything changes, spotted a few dead shrimps already =(

 

[Delapool]

You could run other test kits you have to check but I can't think of one to definitely go out and buy. Especially as they were fine before. Cu, kh and gh tests would be ones I'd do to check but I have the test kits already.

I'd load carbon into the filter and run that for a week to polish the water and remove any pollutants just in case.

 

[Irvids]

Good call, tomorrow on my way back from work I'll buy an ammonia and carbon pack and add it to my canister filter.

I saw a few rcs moving around and running around in the tank. But I noticed that they were all really small, so maybe the babies were a little more resilient to the transfer or what ever else could have/ is in the water. I hope those little guys can survive and repopulate the colony I once heard.


Come to think of it I did transfer everything from the previous tank, and there was a lot of junk that made the water extremely cloudy (brown) but my filters cleaned that up within an 2-4 hours which I then washed the filters out, Maybe the suddent cloud of debris, idk

 

[Delapool]

Fingers crossed that is it and was just acclimatisation (as bad as that is). Sad news on the loss, hopefully nothing a long term problem.

 

[Thefishnut]

Ok my personal findings from keeping rcs they aren't super particular to tds (total dissolved solids) but do die off in my higher tds tanks compared to the others. I try to keep them around 200-300 tds you can buy a cheap meter off of eBay. Also I would venture to say the way you acclimated them was really bad. You need to slowly get them used to your water temps parameters etc. I float in tank in bag half hour then into a bowl with airline tubing and a air line coupler with a dial on it to slow the drip. I get the water dripping out of that about 2-3 drips per min let it fill half the amount of original then siphon off half the water and continue till the water doubles again. Then I transfer to tank and lights off for 24 hrs. Since your older shrimps died off immediately I am assuming this is your issue. Young shrimps are easier to acclimate they are tougher then the older ones. But I do agree with other poster kh and gh is a factor and cu or copper is absolutely deadly you could have it from the pipes in your house. I use ro water personally. But to each his own let me know how it turns out you should be stable soon. These shrimp I found are really hard with water chgs I spend hours working on a 10% water chg twice a week. I would also say 30-40 nitrate is to high I get upset at 20. Again my personal opinion. Good luck!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium Advice

 

[Irvids]

hi everyone, so i wanted to give u guys an update, huge thanks to Delapool for sticking by and helping and Thefishnut for amazing feedback...

I started to notice over the days more and more shrimps coming out, not nearly as many as i once had but still a good amount (over 40) and even spotted a prego RCS which i am extremely excited about.

I have been running water test every over day to if any spikes, everything is normal even my nitrate level have gone down to 10 ppm.

I do believe what Thefishnut said hold a lot of weight, im thinking that by me just transferring the RCS from my old tank to my new one without acclimating them properly, which is water temperature and water quality even though it was a new tank.

I added a few plants out of excitement that i did not completely kill off my entire colonie as i first though lol!!

here are a few pics so far....

new layout

shrimps looking good

2

3

prego RCS