bosk1
Aquarium Advice FINatic
I'll start off with a bit of background history. First, a few random bits. I started with 4 clown loaches in my tank. I lost two to what appear to be internal parasites. I typically do about 40% pwc's every week to week-and-a-half. Lately, due to the hectic holiday schedule and an out-of-state vacation, I'm doing about 50% every 2-3 weeks.
A week ago yesterday, my LFS had a pretty good deal on some small clown loaches, so I decided to buy 3 more to give my remaining 2 a more substantial group of buddies. They looked healthy, as did their tank in general. I got 3 with nice round bellies that were pretty active. As of Thursday, all 5 loaches were present and accounted for, were fairly active, and seemed to be eating fine.
Friday. All three of the new loaches are missing. I can't find them anywhere. It is time for a pwc anyway. I look everywhere, including checking the filter to see if they somehow got in there. I eventually find one dead floater. I'm not sure where he was floating, but I found him. He was chewed up pretty bad. He probably died, and then became a snack for everybody else in the tank. Now that I've found him and moved around a lot of stuff, there is a lot of debris floating around. I move EVERYTHING in that tank--I mean everything, and find no trace of the other 2 loaches. As hard as it is to believe, I resign myself to the thought they must all have suddenly died and the other two must have been eaten. I have no hollow decor, and I've moved everything, so that must be the case. The pwc takes longer than usual because I've stirred up a lot of junk by moving some of the more "permanent" fixtures in the tank. I take out about 60%, fill, and then take out some more to try to suck up all the gunk. In taking apart the filter, and putting it back together, I must have accidentally turned it up a bit. Combine that with "the crazy things fish sometimes do" and... About an hour or two later, I glance at my tank, and one of my pearl gouramis is wrapped around the intake tube, and looks like she's struggling for life. I very gently helf her off of it and find that her tail and some of her fins have been really beaten up and do not look so good. But I watch her a little bit, and she seems relatively okay, although she is not swimming completely right. Fast forward.
Saturday. I have 4 loaches. I have no idea where these two characters are hiding, but they are back, and look just fine. Everybody eats well.
Sunday. I go back to the lfs with the dead clown loach, and they give me a new one.
Monday. I have a dead pearl gourami and a dead gold ram. The pearl gourami was probably overly stressed and/or more seriously injured than it appeared from the filter incident than she appeared, so I can understand. And the ram...well, they are a bit delicate. But it's still odd to lose 3 fish in such a short time span, even though all three are probably somewhat explainable. (new fish, fish that had an accident, and delicate fish) But still... I check all my parameters just to be on the safe side.
Ammonia: zero.
Nitrite: .25. This is strange.
Nitrate: 5
Ph: normal (for these parts, 7.4 is normal)
Why do I have a sudden nitrite spike? Seems strange. Could have been from the dead fish sitting in the tank a little longer than perhaps they should have, but it wasn't that long. My theory: All the crap I stirred up looking for my loaches, combined with the dead loach probably caused an initial ammonia spike. Once the ammonia was processed, my nitrite>nitrate bacteria couldn't process the nitrites fast enough. This may have added to the stress on my gourami and killed her, and since rams are so delicate, even that relatively small amount of nitrites may have pushed that ram over the edge (although the other two are fine, as are my ottos. The other fish I have are pretty hearty, and seem to be fine as well). Even though .25 is not a huge amount, since there should be zero nitrites in a tank that has been cycled for over a year, I thought it best to do another pwc to further push them down, so I did about a 30-40%.
So, that's my bad streak. I hope it is over. Any thoughts from anyone?
A week ago yesterday, my LFS had a pretty good deal on some small clown loaches, so I decided to buy 3 more to give my remaining 2 a more substantial group of buddies. They looked healthy, as did their tank in general. I got 3 with nice round bellies that were pretty active. As of Thursday, all 5 loaches were present and accounted for, were fairly active, and seemed to be eating fine.
Friday. All three of the new loaches are missing. I can't find them anywhere. It is time for a pwc anyway. I look everywhere, including checking the filter to see if they somehow got in there. I eventually find one dead floater. I'm not sure where he was floating, but I found him. He was chewed up pretty bad. He probably died, and then became a snack for everybody else in the tank. Now that I've found him and moved around a lot of stuff, there is a lot of debris floating around. I move EVERYTHING in that tank--I mean everything, and find no trace of the other 2 loaches. As hard as it is to believe, I resign myself to the thought they must all have suddenly died and the other two must have been eaten. I have no hollow decor, and I've moved everything, so that must be the case. The pwc takes longer than usual because I've stirred up a lot of junk by moving some of the more "permanent" fixtures in the tank. I take out about 60%, fill, and then take out some more to try to suck up all the gunk. In taking apart the filter, and putting it back together, I must have accidentally turned it up a bit. Combine that with "the crazy things fish sometimes do" and... About an hour or two later, I glance at my tank, and one of my pearl gouramis is wrapped around the intake tube, and looks like she's struggling for life. I very gently helf her off of it and find that her tail and some of her fins have been really beaten up and do not look so good. But I watch her a little bit, and she seems relatively okay, although she is not swimming completely right. Fast forward.
Saturday. I have 4 loaches. I have no idea where these two characters are hiding, but they are back, and look just fine. Everybody eats well.
Sunday. I go back to the lfs with the dead clown loach, and they give me a new one.
Monday. I have a dead pearl gourami and a dead gold ram. The pearl gourami was probably overly stressed and/or more seriously injured than it appeared from the filter incident than she appeared, so I can understand. And the ram...well, they are a bit delicate. But it's still odd to lose 3 fish in such a short time span, even though all three are probably somewhat explainable. (new fish, fish that had an accident, and delicate fish) But still... I check all my parameters just to be on the safe side.
Ammonia: zero.
Nitrite: .25. This is strange.
Nitrate: 5
Ph: normal (for these parts, 7.4 is normal)
Why do I have a sudden nitrite spike? Seems strange. Could have been from the dead fish sitting in the tank a little longer than perhaps they should have, but it wasn't that long. My theory: All the crap I stirred up looking for my loaches, combined with the dead loach probably caused an initial ammonia spike. Once the ammonia was processed, my nitrite>nitrate bacteria couldn't process the nitrites fast enough. This may have added to the stress on my gourami and killed her, and since rams are so delicate, even that relatively small amount of nitrites may have pushed that ram over the edge (although the other two are fine, as are my ottos. The other fish I have are pretty hearty, and seem to be fine as well). Even though .25 is not a huge amount, since there should be zero nitrites in a tank that has been cycled for over a year, I thought it best to do another pwc to further push them down, so I did about a 30-40%.
So, that's my bad streak. I hope it is over. Any thoughts from anyone?
