Fish Dead, Think Ive Got A Problem

[Miss Wiggle]

Hi guys, just a quick update, ive just lost another fish im afraid, looks like its starting to get to them, now i am desperate for a fix, even if that is possible, might have to resort to use bottle water, would be ok or is this not sutable?

check out the thread in the scientific section...... may not have an answer yet but we've got some possibilities for what's going on.

 

[riksworld]

thanks miss wiggle and rooster, ive been keeping an eye on that thread, im at a complete loss myself

ive compltly emptyied the tank, changed all plants for new potted plants, removed all gravel and cleaned, removed all ornamonts and cleaned, filter system removed, checked and rinsed in tank water, not sure what else i can do

the bottom cannister has a carbon layer, the middle and top one had bio circles, thinking of removing the carbon and put more bio circles in, good idea?

 

[waterdrop]

What do you mean by potted plants? Are you leaving the pots on the roots?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[rabbut]

Yes, I'd remove the carbon. Some mebers sight that it can dump absorbed chemicals back into the tank, and that could possibly be where the ammonia is comming from?? Perhapse someone could set me strait, as I keep seeing conflicting reports...

Adding more bio-media will help. This is what process your ammonia. The more of this stuff you have, the bigger the bacteria colonie the filter can contain, and thus the quicker it can process the ammonia for you.

Plants that are potted may be accumulating a lot of rubbish that would rot to ammonia. This won't be to full solution, as if the filter wasn't coping with it, nitrate would also be high (which it isn't) and ammonia would probibly raise steadily rather than sitting constant. Get these plants out of their pots, remove any dead of dieing leaves and plant loosely into your substrate, see if that makes a difference.

Ontop of the plants, I'd get the carbon swaped for bio-media, see if that helps

Are you getting good flow from the filter outlet?
When did you last replace the carbon?

HTH
Rabbut

 

[waterdrop]

I think all the more recent reports are that carbon generally does not release its captured contents back into the water later - that was a misnomer. Its just that carbon rarely has any more capacity to adsorb anything after 3 days, so if it has not been removed and trashed after 3 days it is simply taking up space in the filter that could be used by a media more optimized as biomedia.

While I agree that more biomedia is almost always good, I would have the minor quibble here that if Rik is already using 2 trays worth of "bio circles" (I assume just different description for ceramic rings, right Rik?) then it might be worth it to examine the mix of mechanical vs. biomedia in the filter... by which I just mean that usually the filter designers try to help you have 3 types of mechanical function: large pore sponge, flow randomizers like ceramic rings and fine pore sponge. If you were to do 3 sections of rings at the expense of one of the sponge types then you might be missing out of some of the mechanical filtration function. (both sponge & ceramics of course playing a good role for both functions, mech and bio.) So what's the sponge situation in the filter?

~~waterdrop~~

 

[locust267]

Just caught up with this thread.

With regards to the tap water being weird, I was always under the impression that if you leave a bucket of tap water over night the chlorine would evaprate.

Now if your water authority adds chloramine to the water would the chlorine part still not evaporate leaving 0.25ppm of ammonia.

Have you contacted your local water authority yet?

We would of course expect to see this when using water treatment to break up the chloramine but on an untreated bucket of water perhaps evaportion could be the culprit?

However the above is just a trivial matter that providing the 0.25 readings become 0 then the fish should remain safe.

Therefore I suggest that you find someone local who could donate some filter media, sponge would prob be best and hopefully that would process the 0.25ppm of ammonia in your tank.

Also can I ask what type of fish are dying as guppies are particularly delicate and hard to keep alive, although the high ammonia isn't helping at the mo it could be a mixture of that and succeptable fish.

Phew, might pop over to the science section now lol to see what they say hehe.

Vicki

 

[riksworld]

Hi guys,

thanks for the repsonses posted

waterdrop, the filter comes in 4 stages, stage 1, down the middle of the filter, from top to bottom is 2 foam sponges, 2nd stage is 2 bags of carbon, 3rd and 4th stage are indeed the bio cerramic rings, each stage, that is from 2 to 4 has its own compartment where the media is kept

the plants are indeed planted without the pots on, did a spelling mistake, sorry for the mis information

shoudlnt the filter, which has coped so far, be able to cope tho without adding more rings, as when i do stock the tank up to full, i dont really want the filter to fall over again as it is currently

 

[waterdrop]

Hi guys,

thanks for the repsonses posted

waterdrop, the filter comes in 4 stages, stage 1, down the middle of the filter, from top to bottom is 2 foam sponges, 2nd stage is 2 bags of carbon, 3rd and 4th stage are indeed the bio cerramic rings, each stage, that is from 2 to 4 has its own compartment where the media is kept

the plants are indeed planted without the pots on, did a spelling mistake, sorry for the mis information

shoudlnt the filter, which has coped so far, be able to cope tho without adding more rings, as when i do stock the tank up to full, i dont really want the filter to fall over again as it is currently

So there is no "final" sponge after the last rings? That seems unusual. You might want to re-state this info in a post to the hardware section and see if you can get them to look at it with you with the idea of the best order for this particular filter. Are the 2 sponges in the first stage of different pore sizes? A sequence I've often seen discussed as being ideal is to have a sponge with larger pores first, then ceramic rings, then ceramic pebbles and then finally a sponge with fine pores. This would be do-able in your filter as there are enough chambers (take out all the carbon) but the hardware guys may know something special about this filter that I don't.

You can do a search on carbon if you're curious, its only needed for special situations, so is good to have on the shelf but is not needed under normal circumstances.

All of this discussion of course has no immediate bearing on the issue of your filter possibly underperforming. That is all about your bacteria population size, which could probably easily get bigger without putting more biomedia in. In fact, a certain amount of the bacteria will be on the carbon and will be lost when you take the carbon out, but you'll need to do that at some point.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Side note to Locust: chloramines were added for the very purpose of not losing the chorine as easily once the water gets to the end of the pipe system. The chlorine in chloramines will not gas off as the traditional chlorine does.

 

[piranha_tim]

Did you by any chance add alot of new additions (fish) to the tank at the same time?

 

[riksworld]

Ive not really added alot of fish, the maximum ive added at once is 2 or 3, ive not added more fish to tank becuase of the problem with the tank for the past month.

Waterdrop, its hard to explain the filter system, but i shall try to explain, you remove the top of the filter system and pull the canister system from under the tank, thats where i have it, as you look down into the filter with the top off, like a birds eye view, you will see that the system comes really in 2 parts, to the left is a plastic pull out plastic filter with 2 sponges attached, both the same gauge it would appear

To the right are the seperate compartments, stacked upright, one on top of each other, the top of these have a plastic cover with holes in which lines up with the impeller from the top section that clips on

The compartmants are stacked 3 high, you remove all 3 at once and remove each one in turn, the bottom one, which goes to the bottom of the filter, just contains 2 small bags of carbon, the next one contains the ceramic rings, the last one also contains ceramic rings, the only thing ive added to the filter system is a small amount of crushed coral to balnce out the ph and the water hardness.

Apart from the filter sponges on the left hand side there are no other type of sponges in the filter or in the comparmants, I think the sponges that are on the plastic pull out are only a pre filter to stop all the rubbish from clogging up the filter and impeller.

The compartments where put in this order acording to the manual, the only difference in the next model up has a extra compartment that I can see.

I hope this helps out a little waterdtop to understand my filter system

 

[locust267]

I still think that getting some mature filter media from somewhere should help - especially if you are taking out the carbon then replacing this with some mature sponge media would help.

Even though your filter has been running a while I cant see what harm doing the above will do as hopefully the established bacteria will process the remaining ammonia that your current media is not doing.

Have you contacted your local authority yet to tell them your findings? You would hope they could give you an answer.

Vicki

 

[riksworld]

hi guys,

just an update, ive purchased some more filter media, called biomax, simular to the stuff allready in there, i will keep you posted and see what happens over the next few weeks

 

[backtotropical]

Ive not really added alot of fish, the maximum ive added at once is 2 or 3, ive not added more fish to tank becuase of the problem with the tank for the past month.

Waterdrop, its hard to explain the filter system, but i shall try to explain, you remove the top of the filter system and pull the canister system from under the tank, thats where i have it, as you look down into the filter with the top off, like a birds eye view, you will see that the system comes really in 2 parts, to the left is a plastic pull out plastic filter with 2 sponges attached, both the same gauge it would appear

To the right are the seperate compartments, stacked upright, one on top of each other, the top of these have a plastic cover with holes in which lines up with the impeller from the top section that clips on

The compartmants are stacked 3 high, you remove all 3 at once and remove each one in turn, the bottom one, which goes to the bottom of the filter, just contains 2 small bags of carbon, the next one contains the ceramic rings, the last one also contains ceramic rings, the only thing ive added to the filter system is a small amount of crushed coral to balnce out the ph and the water hardness.

Apart from the filter sponges on the left hand side there are no other type of sponges in the filter or in the comparmants, I think the sponges that are on the plastic pull out are only a pre filter to stop all the rubbish from clogging up the filter and impeller.

The compartments where put in this order acording to the manual, the only difference in the next model up has a extra compartment that I can see.

I hope this helps out a little waterdtop to understand my filter system

Hi Riksworld,

I posted this in reply to your similar post in the 'Hardware' section, so i thought i'd copy it over here to keep this thread up-to-date.

Sounds fine to me.

In the Fluval externals, the water goes down through the sponges first to remove any debris, then starts to come up through the baskets towards the outlet hose.

Biological media should be the last media that the water passes through in an attempt to keep it as clean as possible, so having carbon on the bottom, then ceramic rings above is correct. You also have 2 baskets full of bio-media, which will help.

The 205 may be slightly small for your tank. It pumps 680 litres per hour giving you turnover of 3.8 times. The 305 would have been my choice for that tank, pumping 1000 litres per hour and giving a turnover of 5.6 times.

That shouldn't mean that you have ammonia which won't process though. 3.8 times turnover should be adequate unless you start to overstock (e.g. malawis etc etc).

Crushed coral shouldn't affect it either. I don't think your filter, or the set up of your filter is to blame for your lingering ammonia readings. I'll have a look at your other thread in 'New to the Hobby' later on to see if i can come up with any answers.

Cheers

BTT

 

[waterdrop]

Oh fun, this should be a good one for you to chew on BTT

~~waterdrop~~
ps. oh gads, this tiny ditty almost didn't post.. I think the servers are revving up early for the 11:30 ips driver error, time to call it a night, lol.

 

[riksworld]

Hi guys, just an update

ive removed the carbon as advised and installed some more bio ceramics to the bottom of the filter, the filter has been running with the new media in for around 1 1/2 weeks now, just thought id would post my current water:

ammonia still at 0.25

Nitrates has incrased to 20

Nitrites still the same 0

anymore advise is welcomed