I've had a rash of fish deaths in the last week, and nothing seems to be helping it.
Here's the tank set up:
90 gallon acrylic
Filter is a Fluval 405, standard media (2 chambers of prefilter, 3 chambers of bacteria media, 2 chambers of carbon, 1 of water polishing 'floss')
Situated on the 'water to tank' tubing is an 18 watt UV purification lamp (the 'twist' type, which forces the water to twist in the tube to increase exposure)
Aquarium plants: 1 Java fern, 1 Amazon Sword, 1 Ancharis. Until recently, I had an aponogenton (I think) -- it spread quickly on the bottom of the tank and had a long root system.
Fish: Used to have a mix before the crash (see below) and now it's down to 1 gourami (who hides most of the time) and 9 orange swords. There used to be only 3 or four swords, but they bred -- in fact they've had so many that I gave some fish away to reduce the population.
Maintenance: I do partial (30%) waterchanges with a siphon hose to clean out approximately once a month. Partial media change out (carbon, prefilter) also once a month.
History: Tank has been up and cycling for 3 years. No major problems until about a year ago, when I had a mysterious tank crash, and the nitrites soared. Responded with water changes and tons of aquarium salt to bring it back under control, but still lost several fish.
Things were fine until happened again a few months later. Same action, same results -- more lost fish. Finally think I figured it out -- the water conditioner that I had bought was bad, and somehow was affecting the bacteria. I switched conditioners and the crashes stopped.
Last issue I had was three months ago, when the plants started looking bad and the tank started to get really 'sludgey' -- not overgrown exactly, but it seem like something was decaying. A fungus showed up, so I treated the fungus with a broad spectrum fungicide and that cleared up the problem. To prevent recurrence, I installed the UV light.
However, I've had a terrible time introducing new fish to the tank. They typically will die in about a week. And just recently, the swords -- who throughout all this were the ones that wouldn't die, and kept breeding -- survived. Until this week.
Now the tank is relatively clear, but I'm losing one sword every other day. No signs of fungal infection. What happens is that one (and just one) starts to swim very slowly, and hangs out in one spot on the tank instead of normally swimming around. Then, they die -- no apparent cause or injury, they just die. And literally, it is only one at a time.
It's basically 'Ten Little Victims' in my tank-- they're getting killed one by one.
Water quality: No ammonia, no nitrites. Nitrates seem consistently above where I want but not in danger level -- 40 ppm. That's part of why I pulled out the aponogenton, because I thought it's dying / decay was driving the nitrates to an unhealthy level. I've tried water changes and seachem prime, still can't seem to get them to go to near zero.
Hardness is an issue where I live, but it's been consistently high for years and haven't had any major issues.
If anybody has any magic advice, please let me know -- i'd like to be able to species diversify my tank, and stop the dying.
Here's the tank set up:
90 gallon acrylic
Filter is a Fluval 405, standard media (2 chambers of prefilter, 3 chambers of bacteria media, 2 chambers of carbon, 1 of water polishing 'floss')
Situated on the 'water to tank' tubing is an 18 watt UV purification lamp (the 'twist' type, which forces the water to twist in the tube to increase exposure)
Aquarium plants: 1 Java fern, 1 Amazon Sword, 1 Ancharis. Until recently, I had an aponogenton (I think) -- it spread quickly on the bottom of the tank and had a long root system.
Fish: Used to have a mix before the crash (see below) and now it's down to 1 gourami (who hides most of the time) and 9 orange swords. There used to be only 3 or four swords, but they bred -- in fact they've had so many that I gave some fish away to reduce the population.
Maintenance: I do partial (30%) waterchanges with a siphon hose to clean out approximately once a month. Partial media change out (carbon, prefilter) also once a month.
History: Tank has been up and cycling for 3 years. No major problems until about a year ago, when I had a mysterious tank crash, and the nitrites soared. Responded with water changes and tons of aquarium salt to bring it back under control, but still lost several fish.
Things were fine until happened again a few months later. Same action, same results -- more lost fish. Finally think I figured it out -- the water conditioner that I had bought was bad, and somehow was affecting the bacteria. I switched conditioners and the crashes stopped.
Last issue I had was three months ago, when the plants started looking bad and the tank started to get really 'sludgey' -- not overgrown exactly, but it seem like something was decaying. A fungus showed up, so I treated the fungus with a broad spectrum fungicide and that cleared up the problem. To prevent recurrence, I installed the UV light.
However, I've had a terrible time introducing new fish to the tank. They typically will die in about a week. And just recently, the swords -- who throughout all this were the ones that wouldn't die, and kept breeding -- survived. Until this week.
Now the tank is relatively clear, but I'm losing one sword every other day. No signs of fungal infection. What happens is that one (and just one) starts to swim very slowly, and hangs out in one spot on the tank instead of normally swimming around. Then, they die -- no apparent cause or injury, they just die. And literally, it is only one at a time.
It's basically 'Ten Little Victims' in my tank-- they're getting killed one by one.
Water quality: No ammonia, no nitrites. Nitrates seem consistently above where I want but not in danger level -- 40 ppm. That's part of why I pulled out the aponogenton, because I thought it's dying / decay was driving the nitrates to an unhealthy level. I've tried water changes and seachem prime, still can't seem to get them to go to near zero.
Hardness is an issue where I live, but it's been consistently high for years and haven't had any major issues.
If anybody has any magic advice, please let me know -- i'd like to be able to species diversify my tank, and stop the dying.
