Floyd R Turbo
Aquarium Advice Addict
I am starting to get a little puzzled at what is going on with my setup. Since purchasing it, I have had several fish die, some for explainable reasons, and other not so much. Go to http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/members/21227-albums414.html to see who's in it.
I use a UGF w/power heads, tank is well established, I jump started it with a bag of extremely dirty water after setup on 1/1/9 and all chem levels stabilized within 2 weeks. Our tap water here is off the scale on pH and phosphates, pH tests 8.8 (API max) every time, even aged, and tank phos levels are over 5ppm (Hagen max), so I've got some algae issues, and I may have just now made a connection to that - more in a sec.
Fish deaths:
First was an oto that died within 2 days - bad fish. Bought 1/11, died 1/13
Second was an orange Molly bought 1/2 and euthanized on 1/17, got dropsy and popeye, treated tank with API aquarium salt as a holistic treatment, which didn't work/didn't really expect it to. She had been through the cycle, so I expected to lose at least one.
Third was a fancy male guppy bought 2/1 died 2/6 - bad fish again.
The next 2 started to make me wonder. #4 was a Dwarf flame Gourami bought 1/11 and died 2/21. I started to see him bloat up in the belly one night, it looked a little worse in the morning, and I read up on it and knew the end was probably coming, and sure enough, within a few hours he was laying on his side, ran when I went to net him, but not for long, euthanized w/icewater and flushed.
#5 was an opaline gourami bought 2/1 and died on 3/2. This one I had noticed had a general lack of enthusiasm for life for a couple days prior to death. Sitting at the top over the powerhead where it's calm, not really swimming around a whole lot, still eating ok but not ravenously like all the other tankmates, so I thought to myslef "self, I'm gonna lose him too" and sure enough, death. However, on 3/1, I hooked up my Magnum 330 with a diatom filter cartridge charged with diatomacious earth to maximum filtering, and while running I scrubbed all the algae off the front and side glass, and then did a cascading water change while doing a deep gravel vacuum job, and let the Magnum run overnight. By cascading I mean 4 gal out, 4 gal in, repeat. Temp matched, using prime, tank pH started around 7.5 and the 'effective' change I did was around 14g or 28% over the course of several hours with tap water of pH 8.8, I'm sure the pH went up a little, but by 8:15pm on 3/2 (day after change/clean) it was 7.6. I have little KH buffer but that's just an assumption since our phosphate is off the chart, until I get that down, I don't really know what carbonate KH is. F'in city water!
#6 was another male Fancy Guppy, but this one was bought 1/11 and died 3/10. Not the most active fish, and never really was, but for the last week or so, same as #5, no enthusiasm, hanging out in eddys, above PH, at surface. Dead & half eaten as bottom of tank in morning. I had done a 10% change on 3/8 in the evening, other than that, nothing major.
** Worth noting at this point that starting mid February, I started a 10g fry tank that now has 45 fry in it, and due to tap water conditions, I pull 2-4 gal daily out of the 55 straight into the 10 so as not to swing the pH, so the 55 gets 4-8% changes daily.
NOW - on 3/10 I did another major cleaning job, Magnum w/diatom, and this time I scrubbed all the glass, including the back glass, which was 100% covered with brown diatom and green algae. I also pulled my power head and scrubbed them, cleaned out the stand tubes, cleaned the white/pink rock (which was black when it wasn't under the tank light), and trimmed plants & move a few around, and did some gravel cleaning, and maybe did about a 8+g or 15+% change. Magnum was GROSS after scrubbing all that algae, but nobody was taking care of it anymore, the livebearers would pick at it, and the SAE and rainbow shark worked it for a while until the green stuff started to take over. 2 days later.............
#7 was a male (?) dalmation lyretail molly bought 1/2 (first batch) that was dead this morning 3/12. Now unlike my other mollies, a female orange lyretail that gave 28 fry on 2/28 (wow, 28 on 28 I never caught that) with about as much effort as it takes one of us to make a sandwich, and a male silver sailfin, both of which seem dominant and are always ina frenzy, this dalmation was always pokey, had one of his lyretails eaten off within a couple weeks of getting him, seemed thin and almost wasting away (as did #5, #6 in the weeks prior to death) and I would see him at the top quite a bit also, just hanging out in the dead spots. Dead on bottom this AM, not chewed up yet.
So does it sound like something is going on in this tank, or am I just losing the weakest fish and shouldn't worry?
All the other fish are the hyper-active overeaters, except for the rasbosa and the redeye tetra, but they eat their share then hang out in the plants.
I use a UGF w/power heads, tank is well established, I jump started it with a bag of extremely dirty water after setup on 1/1/9 and all chem levels stabilized within 2 weeks. Our tap water here is off the scale on pH and phosphates, pH tests 8.8 (API max) every time, even aged, and tank phos levels are over 5ppm (Hagen max), so I've got some algae issues, and I may have just now made a connection to that - more in a sec.
Fish deaths:
First was an oto that died within 2 days - bad fish. Bought 1/11, died 1/13
Second was an orange Molly bought 1/2 and euthanized on 1/17, got dropsy and popeye, treated tank with API aquarium salt as a holistic treatment, which didn't work/didn't really expect it to. She had been through the cycle, so I expected to lose at least one.
Third was a fancy male guppy bought 2/1 died 2/6 - bad fish again.
The next 2 started to make me wonder. #4 was a Dwarf flame Gourami bought 1/11 and died 2/21. I started to see him bloat up in the belly one night, it looked a little worse in the morning, and I read up on it and knew the end was probably coming, and sure enough, within a few hours he was laying on his side, ran when I went to net him, but not for long, euthanized w/icewater and flushed.
#5 was an opaline gourami bought 2/1 and died on 3/2. This one I had noticed had a general lack of enthusiasm for life for a couple days prior to death. Sitting at the top over the powerhead where it's calm, not really swimming around a whole lot, still eating ok but not ravenously like all the other tankmates, so I thought to myslef "self, I'm gonna lose him too" and sure enough, death. However, on 3/1, I hooked up my Magnum 330 with a diatom filter cartridge charged with diatomacious earth to maximum filtering, and while running I scrubbed all the algae off the front and side glass, and then did a cascading water change while doing a deep gravel vacuum job, and let the Magnum run overnight. By cascading I mean 4 gal out, 4 gal in, repeat. Temp matched, using prime, tank pH started around 7.5 and the 'effective' change I did was around 14g or 28% over the course of several hours with tap water of pH 8.8, I'm sure the pH went up a little, but by 8:15pm on 3/2 (day after change/clean) it was 7.6. I have little KH buffer but that's just an assumption since our phosphate is off the chart, until I get that down, I don't really know what carbonate KH is. F'in city water!
#6 was another male Fancy Guppy, but this one was bought 1/11 and died 3/10. Not the most active fish, and never really was, but for the last week or so, same as #5, no enthusiasm, hanging out in eddys, above PH, at surface. Dead & half eaten as bottom of tank in morning. I had done a 10% change on 3/8 in the evening, other than that, nothing major.
** Worth noting at this point that starting mid February, I started a 10g fry tank that now has 45 fry in it, and due to tap water conditions, I pull 2-4 gal daily out of the 55 straight into the 10 so as not to swing the pH, so the 55 gets 4-8% changes daily.
NOW - on 3/10 I did another major cleaning job, Magnum w/diatom, and this time I scrubbed all the glass, including the back glass, which was 100% covered with brown diatom and green algae. I also pulled my power head and scrubbed them, cleaned out the stand tubes, cleaned the white/pink rock (which was black when it wasn't under the tank light), and trimmed plants & move a few around, and did some gravel cleaning, and maybe did about a 8+g or 15+% change. Magnum was GROSS after scrubbing all that algae, but nobody was taking care of it anymore, the livebearers would pick at it, and the SAE and rainbow shark worked it for a while until the green stuff started to take over. 2 days later.............
#7 was a male (?) dalmation lyretail molly bought 1/2 (first batch) that was dead this morning 3/12. Now unlike my other mollies, a female orange lyretail that gave 28 fry on 2/28 (wow, 28 on 28 I never caught that) with about as much effort as it takes one of us to make a sandwich, and a male silver sailfin, both of which seem dominant and are always ina frenzy, this dalmation was always pokey, had one of his lyretails eaten off within a couple weeks of getting him, seemed thin and almost wasting away (as did #5, #6 in the weeks prior to death) and I would see him at the top quite a bit also, just hanging out in the dead spots. Dead on bottom this AM, not chewed up yet.
So does it sound like something is going on in this tank, or am I just losing the weakest fish and shouldn't worry?
All the other fish are the hyper-active overeaters, except for the rasbosa and the redeye tetra, but they eat their share then hang out in the plants.
