Is it normal?

[Fishyfanatic]

This evening I pulled out a GBR that wasn't looking too good. There was something seriously wrong with her. She still had her coloration but her eyes were blacker than normal and she was swimming oddly. When I was examining the tank for possible fish deaths that could cause the ammonia to spike (didn't test it, but it's always my first assumption) I noticed that my True Rummynose Tetras have a sort of green tint to the top half of their body. It's almost see through. I've never noticed this before. It's not something that you can notice unless you carefully inspect them. Is this normal?

 

[DeFeKt]

I had similar on green terror pair.
around the forehead and gills area, it looked almost clear / see through.

Never thought anything of it, and they are still alive and breeding well 6 mnths later.
Only thing I could put it down to was a fresh tank, so clean that maybe it was an illusion.
green tint sounds odd though.

 

[greenmaji]

Ive seen symptoms like this with poorly maitained tanks.
Take in consideration I have no experince with GBR's and from everything Ive read they tend to be easily stressed by there envorment, I would be on alert to do more maintance.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

I do water changes once a week of 35% and clean the filter every 4 weeks. Nitrates are around 10 to 20. It's not a poorly maintained tank. I'm not suprised about the GBR. This one imparticular has always been the runt and I've been watching him carefully since I purchased him. It's the Rummynose that I am concerned about.

 

[greenmaji]

Sorry, looking back at my post it apears that I may have been assuming that your tank was poorly maintained..
This was not the intenetion of the message, I have just seen these symtoms in that enviroment.
With the experince of seeing it show up in that envorment I would tend to want to atempt to achive better water peramiters then I have been getting (unless my maintaince was going on the verge of extreem with extreamly frequent and high % water changes, then I would be looking elsewere for a solution) I would see no harm in increasing the % of your waterchange since its done weekly with a python, I would try 50% to start and see if conditions don't improve.
HTH

 

[Fishyfanatic]

It's ok. No offense taken. I was going to start increasing the percentage of water changes to try and better the plant life so I guess it's a win win situation.

Right now I am doing an experiment with my plants to see which way they grow better in our water. It has a very high pH of 8.2 and liquid rock hardness. The deposit buildup in the tank is unbearable. I'm scrubbing it on a daily basis to keep it at bay. To this day I have not had the deposits form on any of the other tanks, it's weird. I have been monitoring the Nitrates and phosphates to try and keep it at a 10:1 ratio. Usually it's around 20:2. The plants are only getting worse. I maintained the tank this way for 1 month and it has not helped.

For the next month I am going to increase the percentage of the water changes and try to keep the Nitrates very very low. I'm hoping to find that with the increased water changes the plants will thrive. And as a side note I'm hoping that it will help eliminate the deposit buildup.

It's just a theory, but I'm thinking that the plants are stripping something from the water that is causing the buildup. There is no other reason why this tank should have the buildup and none of the others do. The only variable is the plants.

 

[greenmaji]

It could be the ferts if your dosing.

And you could look into EI.. czcz does alot of his planted tank work with it.

 

[Fishyfanatic]

I'm not dosing anything. The tank has the stock lighting, not even 1wpg.

 

[greenmaji]

You can have some defecencys even with low light..
here's a link for diagnosing them.
http://www.aquariaplants.com/plantdeficiencies.htm

HTH

 

[Fishyfanatic]

I'm thinking that it is just the water. The plants thrived at our old house but they are not looking too good with the new water source. Based on that chart, we have low Nirates. Considering that the tank is at about 20 ppm I am at a loss.