Stupid Question

[Nick & Anne]

Hi,

Ok, my husband always says there is never a stupid question if you really need an answer, well in this case I might have to disagree.

When cleaning out the tank and doing a partial water change we found a fish head, only small, no body attached, probably some-one's breakfast. It was the shape of a Corey head rather than very flat like the Tetra's we have, but get this, NO_ONE IS MISSING! they are all swimming around looking just fine. 8O

Is it possible some-one had a baby and we missed it?
We are struggling with green water at the moment so it is a bit cloudy in there have tried covering it but we are still a bit green. Have cut down on the food, got filters for the PHosphate.

our most recent water tests were:
PH - 8
Ammonia -0
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite -0

Any suggestions as to what's going on?

Tahnks in advance
Anne & Nick

 

[YuccaPatrol]

Stupid answer: Fish mafia sometimes toss a fish head into the tank to scare the fish into paying for protection. Since you didn't find more than one, it is safe to assume that your fish are now making their payments to the fish mafia.

But seriously, what kind of fish do you have and how long have you had your aquarium going? Obviously some fish died in there, but it could have been in there quite some time. Chances are that at some time you had some fish death that went unnoticed.

You could also be right that you have had some unknown reproduction and it is a baby that did not survive. I have read of people finding extra little corys, so that is likely in your case.

What fish do you have and how long have you had the tank setup?

I am a little surprised that you would have green water with zero ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Typically an algae bloom goes hand in hand with excess nitrates.

If you are going to do a blackout to kill the algae, you need to COMPLETELY cover the tank and not allow any light at all to shine in there for at least 3 days. Don't even peek. It is ok to not feed the fish during the blackout period.

 

[donttaptheglass]

You didn't by any chance add any used decorations from maybe an old tank or one that a friend gave you? Could be a leftover. I pulled an old cave decoration out of the shed the other day and found what I suspect to be the spine of a Pleco in there when I rinsed it out.

 

[Zagz]

Stupid answer: Fish mafia sometimes toss a fish head into the tank to scare the fish into paying for protection. Since you didn't find more than one, it is safe to assume that your fish are now making their payments to the fish mafia.

That made me LMAO! Seriously though, I would say either a baby that went unnoticed or someone is playing a joke on you.

 

[Macrosill]

Zero nitrAtes? Something is wrong. How do you test? Test strips or liguid reagent? If liquid how old is the test kit? Take some water to a lfs and ask them to test it to see what they come up with. If the tank is cycled there will always be nitrAtes in the water.

After the blackout treatment you need to do large pwc's of atleats 2 50% one after the other to get the free floating algea out of the tank.

How long do you light the tank? Any direct sunlight?

Did you test phosphates? If you don't have a phosphate test kit get one. I have been advised that high phosphates a major cause of algea blooms. Rotting fish carcass or rotting fishfood,due to over feeding, are main causes of high phosphates. The fish head may me the key here.

Another cause of phosphates is neglecting to clean out your filter, not the media but the housing itself. When was the last time you did this?

Good Luck,
Brian

 

[Nick & Anne]

Laugh I nearly wet myself!!

Hi,

Thanks for that reply, it really made us laugh, we will have to keep looking over our shoulders for the baddies!
We have not had a tank before so nothing has gone in that should not have. We remember the fish we have bought as it is only recently, we have names for most of them and we had a roll call last night when we found what was left of the intruder! We do have two pairs of very affectionate coreys who do like to play around together but as to their sex, that's any-ones guess!

The tank is fairly new, cycled since November. We clean everything including the filters regularly, we do not have a kit for Phosphates but did put some Phos-X in with the filter medium on the advice of the lfs. We use a liquid reagent for testing the water and it was only bought in December. After the tank was first cycled, the Nitrates were sitting at 10 but that only lasted a week or so, since then we have always had the same readings as posted before, every time we test, which is about once a week.

we have the following in the tank:48 Gal, Freshwater.
Containing:
6 black skirted tetra's
6 Neon tetra's
2 Pepper Cory's
2 Panada Cory's
6 White skirt Tetra's
2 Scissor tail Rasboras
2 Harlequin Rasboras
3 Zebra Danio's
3 Otocinclus


We will take some water to the lfs tomorrow to have it tested, we only feed once a day at the moment, the tank is not in direct sunlight, we have only been turning the light on at 5.00pm and off at 10.30 pm of late have last did a 50% water change just before we covered it over. We tried a cover up a few weeks ago for three days, never peeked or fed them but it did not seem to help. This time we are using a thicker cover just in case that was why. Could it be something other than an algae bloom? It certainly looks like a green fog.

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Here's a stupid question...

Do you see any fish swimming around with no head?

That is probably one of the oddest things I've heard of..

for the green water, try phosphate removing media.. HBH makes some relatively cheap pads.. (I think petsmart carries HBH stuff)

 

[LydiaGreen]

My daughter started out with 5 albino cories... two years later she has eight and I have found a cory body in there once. So, it's quite possible this is some unnoticed offspring.

 

[lovemybarbs]

that's strange. After I "lost" my shrimp is when I got algae bloom. Our theory is that the pictus ate him. Will a dying/rotting fish promote algae bloom?

How big is your tank?? Maybe there are more fry in there. Wouldn't the head of a fry be small?? I'm thinking yes.

 

[Nick & Anne]

Hi,

Again, really glad we posted this tread, we have never laughed so much in years!
As for a swimming body, it's too Bl****y green in there to tell, there could be hundreds of swimming heads and bodies for all we know!

The tank is 48 gallons and we had put in some phos-x phosphate remover in with the filter medium but this has so far proved ineffective. We were probably overfeeding at one point but have since cut it right back. We have not actually cleaned the impeller etc yet we only used to clean out the sponges and rinse the container, but will do that today. We will also get a phosphate kit, is it easy to do? We have also tried on the recommendation of the lfs some Seachem Clarity, all this did was get rid of the local snail population that had come in on the plants.

Our water is filtered through a Fluval 305 is this sufficient or do we need to have a bubble system in there as well? What do you experts think we should be putting in the water in the way of chemicals on a regular basis, perhaps we are not doing that properly. We have two real plants in there at the moment.

 

[Macrosill]

You should not need any "chemicals" on a regular basis. When was the last pwc and how large was it? The only thing I put in my water is dechlorinator. I treat the new water that is going to be used for my pwc's.

That filter should be sufficient for your tank.

You say you may have overfed at some point. How much and how often do you feed. What do you feed? Flakes should be fed in an amount that the fish will consume in a few minutes and only once a day. Some people do this twice a day. Also turn off your filters when feeding. The currect will sink the food and it will rot on the bottom as well as not give sufficient time for the fish to eat. You should also be feeding some other foods, brine shrimp, veggies.

Have you vac'ed the gravel?

Trying to help,
Brian

 

[Nick & Anne]

Hi,

We must be on the right track then, we only treat the water that goes back in when we do pwc's. We had been doing a small water change every few days while we had the green water but to no avail. This time we did a 50% pwc Thursday evening before covering it up.

We used to feed twice a day, flake, blood worms & a couple of pellets for the Coreys. We now only feed once a day, we have not been switching off the filter, so will try that but the fish always appear hungry and eat up almost straight away and then often go down and try to share the Coreys food too.

Yes, we do vac the gravel occasionally but not every water change, is this correct? we thought you would take out too much of the good bacteria if you did this too often? Our water when it was clear always looked cloudy by the end of a week so we changed a small amount of water every week.

Thanks for everybody's input, off to the lfs this afternoon, if the snowstorm outside lets up a bit!

Have a great weekend, wherever you are.
Nick & Anne

 

[Macrosill]

You are on the right track. The pwc before the black out is good. The important thing is to do 2 large pwc's after the blackout, to remove the dead algae. I did back to back 80 % pwc's.

I only feed once a day. Turn off the filters during feedings. I too have the shrimp pellets for the cory's. This is intriguing because I only recently started using them and shortly after is when my algae outbreak began. I am stopping usimng these pellets to see what happens.

Do not vac the gravel too often. You are on the right track here as well. I find that with proper feeding and turning off the filter during feedings this keeps the substrate much cleaner. I vac every month or so but only do half the tank at a time and this all depends on your substrate and fish you have. The corys help with excess food as well. The important thing is when you vac make sure to vac really well and under deco's as well.

10% pwc per week should be acceptable but more will not hurt either. I usually do at least a 20% sometimes more.

Good Luck,
Brian

 

[Rondory]

Do you have any decorations in the tank like caves or something where a fish could get stuck in and die? Maybe your decoration was used in someone else's tank and then returned and sold to you.

Its fun to laugh together about strange things like this.

 

[Nick & Anne]

Hi,

No, everything we bought was brand new from the fish shop everything either came in a box or was wrapped in plastic and never been used before, they do have pieces of wood they can swim around and under with places to hide at the back but as we have said before no-one is missing, they are all present and correct! The head must have been some-ones baby, but with the green murk we just never noticed it growing up.

Back from the lfs, the water was fine apart from green, we bought some fine wool to go in the filter to try and strain out the algae which has had a small amount of p clear added to it. We will see if that works, we resorted to chemicals as we are so fed up of the colour of the water and we wanted to try and clear it up quickly to see if any-one else is creeping around in the background.
Who knows we might even find the rest of the deceased.

Nick & Anne

 

[Macrosill]

I understand your frustration. However the key here is not really clearing up the water but finding out why it turned green in the first place. Use caution with adding chemicals.

Good Luck,
Brian

 

[Purrbox]

Check out this article for some great tips on clearing up green water.

More than likely the dead fish that you found caused an ammonia spike which in turn caused the green water. I really would avoid using chemicals to fix the problem, as most of these usually make things worse in the long run even if they seem to fix it in the short term.

You mentioned that you tended to get cloudy water by the end of the week, before the algae bloom occured. Sounds like maybe it was already present and just needed a good food source, a dead fish in this case, to really get going. By any chance do your tank get any sunlight during the day? If so you should seriously consider moving it. Sunlight, whether direct or indirect has often been tied to Green Water.

 

[7Enigma]

Purrbox,

The part I'm having a lot of trouble with is the lack of nitrAtes. Since you don't have a live planted tank that could directly use the ammonia, I don't know how you could get rid of all the nitrAte that would be produced from a rotting fish.

Let's just say for example that the fish that rotted put out 50ppm ammonia that was converted to nitrAte. Even if you did 5 50% PWC's, you would still have 1.5ppm nitrAte, and that's NOT including any of the normal ammonia producers (fish, uneaten food, etc). There is no way you can have 0 nitrAte in that tank, unless you are heavily planted or (more likely) your nitrAte liquid test is bad.

Did you ever get results back from the LFS on the tank water?

Oh and one more thing. You could get another 3 Oto's for cleanup duty. I don't know how well they work with green water (free-floating algae), but they work wonders on anything that coats a surface in the tank. They are schooling fish so having 6 in your tank would be very interesting for you two to watch, and make them more comfortable in your tank. They also stay quite small so the bioload of your tank would not be impacted. Might want to wait until the GW is cleared up however.

 

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

7, They have 3 Oto's already and they will do nothing for green water, the only thing you can add to the tank that feeds on green water are fan shrimp or daphnia (water fleas, free food for the fishies too).

Also, i would be interested if the LFS gave you the numbers, what your readings were and what theirs were..

I would not add chemical coagulants, they clump the algae together, but imagine what it does to a fishes gills..

I have never had a blackout fail. but it is important that absolutely no light gets in. my tank is in the basement so there is no daylight whatsoever. (use a heavy blanket, or something that has 100% light blocking (stick it over your head while standing out in the sun, if you see light, then you need something thicker)..

 

[jsoong]

I had a bad NO3 kit within a month or so of me getting it ..... check the expiration date on your kit .... the NO3 #3 seems to go bad fast. To test the kit itself, I made a solution of KNO3 (use some soluble house plant fertilizer), and when that came back 0, I knew the kit is toast.

A fast (but temporary) way of getting rid of GW is micron filtration. I have a spare HOT magnum with a micron filter that will clear up the algae in a few hours. I find pulling all the algae out of the tank is as good as a black out .... although you still have to solve the underlying problem. Unfortunately, you can't get real fine filters for HOB filters. But if you can borrow a canister, that's another option.