10 Gallon CRASHED!

[Nina7777]

Well I wasn;t exactly sure where to post this, so i decided this may be the best place.

My 10 gallon was up and running for 3 months. I tested the water daily as well as doing 10% water changes daily (I cycled with fish) for the first month all I had was two platties. When I got 0 amonia readings for a week straight I added 3 Skunk Cories, and continued to do the 10% water changes daily untill I went a week straight again with 0 amonia. Nitrite levels were fine as well.

Then all of a sudden one of my cory got fin rot and it went all down hill from there. On sunday the amonia levels were 0, yesterday they were up to the "very dangerous zone" I immediately did a 50% water change but this didn't help, then the tank starting getting extremely cloudy and the amonia and nitrite levels sky rocketed! The one cory with fin rot passed away. I had no idea what was happening so I moved the two remaining cory's and 2 platties to my 55 gallon.

My question is, does anyone have any idea what happened to the tank? I've kept fish for over 6 years and have never seen this happen before.

and my second question is do you think my 55 gallon is now overstocked? I don't want it to crash as well.

P.S. I was feeding the bare minimums for rotten food was not the problem.

THANKS!

 

[konrad05]

Have no clue what happened to your 10 gallon, maybe the daily water changes delayed the nitrogen cycle substantially (3 months). All those symptoms sound like new tank syndrome. I would just increase biological filtration and wait it out. And I don't think you're 55 gallon is over stocked, far from actually.

-K

 

[Moe]

The cory could have been coming down with fin rot when you got him and the stress of the move from the LFS brought it on. Sometimes keeping a small tank can be harder than a large one. Adding 3 fish even small ones to a newish 10g at once may have been enough to do it. When things go wrong in a small tank they go really wrong. I'd keep doing what you are doing and add the fish very slowly. I add one every 2 - 3 weeks in my 10G's. Hope this helps.

 

[modernhamlet]

I'm so sorry for your loss, Nina. That's really unexpected and terrible.

I really don't know what happened, but let me at least try to help figure it out....

You said:

the tank starting getting extremely cloudy and the amonia and nitrite levels sky rocketed

What color of cloudy was it? White? Green? Something else?
What exactly were your readings over the last 7 days?
When were your last three water changes?
What, if anything, did you add to the tank in the last 2 weeks?

Also, I saw that the tank was planted. Were the plants healthy or struggling? (I had an ammonia spike caused I'm pretty sure, by decaying plants. I'd overplanted, especially java moss.)

Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of this.

BTW, how is everyone doing in the 55?

 

[Salt Freak]

don't do so many water changes, and it is normal it is called a nitrite and ammonia spike, it will slowly decrease as you get your biological filter set up 4-6 weeks you can speed up this process with a bacteria starter stress zyme you can find it at petco or petsmart.

 

[konrad05]

"beneficial bacteria-in-a-bottle" is the biggest waste of money. Most if not all don't work. Used gravel will do the trick.

 

[Nina7777]

Hey there,
Let me try to answer the question.

What color of cloudy was it? White? Green? Something else?

The water was Beige, Being more descriptive it looked like beige specs all over the place, plants, walls, gravel, fish, and suspended in the water.

What exactly were your readings over the last 7 days?

4/7/04: Amonia= 0 Nitrite= 0 Nitrate=between 20 and 40 GH=75 KH=120 PH=7.0
4/8/04-4/11/04: All readings were nearly the same
4/12/04: Amonia=6.0 or higher Nitrite=4.0 Nitrate= 80
After doing 50% water change: Amonia= 3.0 Nitrite= 3.0 Nitrate= 40

When were your last three water changes?

I was doing 10% water changes every day.

What, if anything, did you add to the tank in the last 2 weeks?

In the past two weeks I added One plant to make the grand total 2 Plants.

The cories were added over 3 weeks ago.

BTW, how is everyone doing in the 55

The cories are loving the bigger tank! Everyone that was already in there is fine. My convict priscilla is being a very good girl! But my platties are miserable. They like their privacy and are very frightened by my two bala's. I am trying to keep the 10 gallon running and clearing it up a bit with the real plants. I hope to be able to move just the platties back soon.

Any suggestions on how to prepare the tank, so this won't happen again?

Thanks sooooo much!

 

[pendragon]

Nina,

Dang, I'm sorry to hear about that. A tank crash is my worst nightmare, but I'm sure if I'm in fishkeeping long enough, I'll run into one sooner or later.

At any rate, looking at your water parameters, your ammonia and nitrite levels looked consistent with "cycled tank behavior", then both suddenly jumped. I don't know exactly what happened, but cutting right to the skinny of it, there are only two fundamental things that could've caused the parameters to "reverse" like that. Either an increase in bioload (i.e. increased input to the nitrogen cycle), or a failure of the biological filter (something killed your bacteria, either in part or in total). There's just nothing else that could've caused it.

If you hadn't just added livestock, can you think of anything at all you did differently right before the tank crash? Used any chemicals (cleaning solutions? Air fresheners? Anything?) around the tank? Had hands in the tank with something on them maybe?

pendragon!

 

[drobbins27]

I tihnk the culprit was decaying plants

 

[Nina7777]

If you hadn't just added livestock, can you think of anything at all you did differently right before the tank crash? Used any chemicals (cleaning solutions? Air fresheners? Anything?) around the tank? Had hands in the tank with something on them maybe?

Well i did notice fin rot in one of the cories and added Melafix, but its all natural and not supposed to disrupt the biological filter. Oh yeah and I added "clarity" by sea chem.

I tihnk the culprit was decaying plants

The plants are actually flourishing, however after I just wrote the above statement, Perhaps it was the "clarity". I had this happen in my 30 gallon once!

JJJEEZZZZZ why didn't i think of that before! Thanks, Pendragon for asking that question, I never even thought of it'!

Do you guys think it is safe to say Mystery solved?