P Will
Aquarium Advice Newbie
I setup my tank about 4 months ago, starting off by waiting the 6 weeks etc until all was OK. I added fish, including an anenome and a clown. There were no problems at all except the pH was always just below 8 and the KH hardness was about 7. However all remained healthy and I add some other fish. They all did well until about a month ago and they started dying one by one, with the rate of dying getting quicker as the time went by. The anenome remained happy through all of this, but every single fish died. I checked all the chemistries and NH3 was 0, and nitrites were 0. pH remained a problem and finally the pet shop told me to get a buffer, which I did. This worked perfectlyand the pH corrected to 8.3 and the KH was 10. I figured my problems were over and I bought two damsels as a test. They behaved well and even the anenome appeared even happier than before. After about 4 days the damsels would not feed and swam around less and less, staying near the bottom. One was dead on the 5th day and the other died on the 6th. It had looked fine on the evening before. I took some water to the pet store and it tested off the wall for nitrates (my multi-kit did not include nitrates and no had said anything about them before). I have done water changes without much effect. The anenome remains happier than ever. Some of the things I read now say that nitrates are not a big issue for the fish bet certainly are bad for coral (I have none) and for the inverts, but my anenome hasn't heard of this. Should I get the nitrates down? How do I do this if the water exchanges do not work? Are there any other things I should be checking? Maybe diseases, but the fish had no spots, slime any any other hints of disease. Their spring just seemed to wind down and they stopped. Any help would be appreciated and I am sorry this is so long........