Proper Treatment Regimen

[Bigorangeboy]

We have a 21 year old Blood Parrot Cichlid that is in a tank by himself, he had tank mate that he was constantly picking on - so 3 years ago we finally moved her to another tank. She is thriving and gets along with the other fish.

The old male has struggled with high ammonia levels for a few months, we do 30% water changes every few days, and add a dose of prime and Stability with each change. We also added the Fluval zeolite/carbon baggies to his canister filter just in the last week.

He picked up a fungus on his fins, and we used Paraguard to treat. It’s getting better, but we removed the Purigen and Zeolite/Carbon so it would work- doing so puts him at a risk of ammonia levels going back up. He’s very old, and perhaps his immune system is just spent.

I just did another water change this AM and will stop the Paraguard so I can keep the chemical filtration in place. We are fortunate that we have great well water that tests negative for any issues, so it’s not a problem to just keep giving him fresh water. Is there something else I should do? I only do filter maintenance every 60 days, and that is just a quick rinse of the ceramic material and replacing the Purigen. He’s not messy, and the first stage filter pads have literally no debris- so I leave them mostly alone.

 

[Andy Sager]

It sounds like the tank or the filter is too small for the fish if you keep having ammonia issues. Not enough water volume. There are a couple of ways to deal with that: 1) put him in a larger tank. 2) do more frequent water changes. 3) add some Fritzyme #7 or Tetra SafeStart to add more nitrifying microbes so that they consume the more ammonia and convert it into nitrates as the end product.
Usually, when a fish has been in a tank for a long time, there should be enough nitrifying microbes to consume the ammonia production. Unless your pH is below 7.2 ( the lower range for optimal nitrification) , it's possible that your filter's impeller or motor needs a good cleaning or replacement as it's not filtering enough water to support the larger microbe bed. Big fish usually have big poop which means it should be being seen in the filter. It sounds like you are not seeing that which is a problem. So what I would do first is clean the filter box and impeller and see if that increases the water flow. If it doesn't, you may want to consider to increase the size of the filter or choose on of the 3 steps I listed above. If you do replace the filter, make sure you get one where your tank's size is in the middle of the tank range for the filter. If you have say, a 20 gallon tank, you don't want a filter rated for up to 20 gallons. You'd want one rated for 10-30 gallons at a minimum.

Hope this helps.