Help!

[Kellz]

Hi,

First of all please dont shout!

Before joining this forum and reading up I bought a 110 ltr tank and have started what you call a fish in cycle.

I currently have 2 Platys (I had 3 one died last night!) and 6 neons.

I also have 6-8 live plants.

As i have just mentioned i lost my male Platy last night.

He was fine when i checked and then within an hour he was dead.... First thing I did was test the water.....

Ammonia - .4

Nitrite - .5

Nitrate - 25

Someone please help before i lose anymore!

Also i did a 25% water change on Sat and dependant on advise given today will do another tonight.

 

[chigwellhammer]

Doing bit of research on this myself and i read your meant to do a 50% water change AM and PM everyday? have you been doing this?

 

[Kellz]

Nope as was told to only do 20% every week.

 

[chigwellhammer]

Thats for when it is stable, I would start doing a 50% water change twice a day morning and night for now.

Have a read of this http://www.tetra-fish.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1765

 

[Gilli]

You need to be doing daily water changes with minimal feeding. The 20% water change every week is only when your tank is fully cycled. Your neons will probably die as they dont do well in uncycled tanks and should not be added to any tank less then 6 months old.

If you dont want any more fish to die read up fast on cycling a tank with fish in on the following thread

Cycling a tank

 

[waterdrop]

Hi kellz and Welcome to the beginners section!

What chigwell says is not a -bad- thing, but it is incomplete. When there are poisons like ammonia and nitrite(NO2) in the water, doing gravel-clean-water-changing is your friend, but there are things to know about it that can give you a more full understanding.

You are indeed in what we call a "Fish-In Cycling Situation" and very large and frequent water changing (with good technique) may be called for. Do you have a liquid-reagent based test kit (little test tubes and bottles of test liquids) yet? Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit. A good liquid test kit allows you to be more confident that the numbers you are taking action on are reasonable.

Your goal in a Fish-In situation is to keep both the ammonia and nitrite(NO2) concentrations below 0.25ppm until you can be home again to test and potentially change water. Big water changes are better than small ones, especially at first. At first its usually best to gravel-clean-siphon water out until there's just an inch or two such that the fish are still able to swim ok (all they need is a little more than a puddle really.) Using good technique for the return water means that you want dose a good conditioner, such as Seachem Prime, at a rate of 1.5x to 2x whatever amount the bottle says for the given volume. If you condition the bucket, you base it on the bucket volume, whereas if you dose the tank directly you must dose to the full tank volume. So you get the chlorine/chloramine out and the other thing you do is roughly match the temperature (your hand is good enough for this as it will get you within a couple of degrees and fish are fine with that.)

If you still only have paper strips to test with then you should err to larger water changes until you can obtain a liquid kit. The water changing can seem quite laborious but this is in fact the most essential thing for the fish. Even these trace amounts (0.25ppm) can do some irritation and larger amounts are a life and death situation for them along with permanent gill and nerve damage being done (which of course they can't tell you about!) The nitrite in particular as the ability to hang down within the gravel, so this is what the gravel-cleaning aspect is all about. There are also hose systems for direct-fill of the tank if the bucket carrying is too rough.. people can tell you about that if its an issue for you.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Kellz]

Hi, I do have a gravel cleaning tube thing and this is how i have been doing it so far. What would be the correct technique with doing this?

Do i move it up and down to disturb the gravel or just put it and and hold it etc??

I currently have the tablet water test kit but once that runs out i am going to get the API Master kit! Not that happy with the tablet kit as it can be quite hard to tell the difference with the colours.

When you talk about conditioner do you mean the tapesafe stuff? If so i am using the interpet stuff with aloe vera. If not what is this?

Thanks for your help so far!

Also please tell me more about these hose systems for direct-fill of the tank.... How much etc....

 

[Kellz]

Soooooo...... I went to my LFS and bought some live bacteria and some ammonia remove and went home prepared to see some more dead fish.

Well they were all swiming around fine.

I did a 25-30% water change and nearly soaked myself in the process (concentrating on the gravel cleaning and not the bucket that was rapidly filling with water!). Put in the live bacteria and the ammonia remover. This brought the ammonia levels down to between 0 and .1.

I will do a full test again tonight once the live bacteria have had a chance to work.

Any ideas why the biggest fish died but the smallers ones seam ok?

 

[Curiosity101]

Live bacteria often isn't live bacteria when you use it so don't expect a quick fix from that. Have you read the fish in cycle topic yet? If so don't mess around with chemicals and additives...just follow the fish in cycling guide.

Different fish have different tolerances for toxins... it wont be a case of it necessarily being bigger. Just that it was more suceptible.

And yes conditioner is the tapsafe stuff you mentioned. I would recommend seachem prime, very economical and very good for fish in cycling situations.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with C101. It is often very confusing if you go to the LFS as they will have a different agenda to sell you bottles. In rare circumstances over the years there have been some bacterial products that have worked a little bit but the vast majority of time the bacteria in a bottle products are just a complete waste of money, as the bacteria (not having oxygen etc) are all dead and often not of the correct species in any case.

It also doen't work to use extra chemicals meant for ammonia removal because these rob the fledgling bacteria of their food (ammonia!) So the only tried and true course of action is to test for ammonia and nitrite twice a day and be prepared to gravel-clean-water-change possibly twice a day. The cycle you want to get in to is where the water change takes your ammonia (or whatever trace is showing) down to zero ppm or close to that and then at some later test, either 12 or 24 hours later, you find you are getting close to 0.25ppm and do a water change to take it back down again close to zero. The first ones are usually the most needed and often you find that you get in to a pattern where you can go a full day or a couple of days before the next water change is needed, depending on how much of a fish load you've got in there compared to how much your baby bacterial colonies have grown to thus far (so of course everyone's actual situation is different and changing.)

Yes, getting the hang of using your water siphon and bucket is challanging, and in fact one of few benefits (if you could call it that, lol) of accidentally getting in to a fish-in cycling situation is that you'll get a LOT of practice at doing that basic bit of maintenance and its an important skill as its core to having a really heathy tank, even after your biofilter is up and working and all cycled. You do indeed want to be working your gravel cleaning cylinder through the gravel and watching to see that you are giving it a little time to let any debris that you've stirred up go on up with the water. In a new tank you can't see much but it will be much more obvious in the future when the tank is more mature and has more debris.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Kellz]

Thank you all for your help!

What had actually happened is that the filter had a problem and kept cutting out and then completely died! So back to our LFS it was to replace it. Fingers crossed it wont happen again but i am now tempted to buy a spare is this a good idea?!

 

[waterdrop]

Aw, that's too bad! Its quite unusual for a filter motor to actually die, but I guess it does happen. Often beginners can confuse the "priming" process (where you have to work the air bubbles out of the siphon on an HOB(hang on back of tank) or EC (external cannister)) with a motor not working.. or there could be a broken impeller (the little fan that moves the water) or cracked ceramic shaft (the axel that the impeller turns on.)

Obviously if you can afford it then an "extra" filter is a great thing, but many beginners don't feel they can afford it! I know the filter on my son's little tank cost $150 american and I'm not willing to get an extra! People who are into the hobby so seriously that they have a lot of tanks are much better off in this department! Most beginners only have their main display tank and a Quarantine/Hospital tank that they use as a holding place before fish are added to the main tank.

If a filter cuts out then the bacteria will indeed begin to die off after a while. The bacteria very much need that constant flow of fresh water with ammonia and oxygen being brought right up against their cell walls. The water also provides them with other little things like Calcium and Iron, which they use to build various cellular structures.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Kellz]

Yeah, see i could one at some point but i would rather not. I may hold out then on getting another.

I only have the one tank for now do you think i should get another Quarantine/Hospital tank? Where would i put it! lol

 

[stuuk1]

Don't worry yourself too much about the fish-in cycle. Like you, I thought it was a case of just buying a tank, filling it with water and putting fish in. It wasn't until I joined here that I realised what I had got myself in to....

In all, I had three fish die and all of these were Mollies.

Dont get carried away with two water changes a day, you will get bored of the 'hobby' before its even started. When I started my fish-in cycle I just stuck to 1 x 50% change a day. You can do 2 x 25% if that's what you prefer, but it just means getting wet then dry then wet then dry again + finding the time for the second change.

Stick to one, get it over and done with. The process can drag, so be warned! Its well worth reading up on it though. This site is great for info on the 'Nitrogen-cycle'. The more you know about it, the more it will help you. Weirdly, it can become quite interesting, or maybe thats me...

 

[mike_980]

i was the same as above and thought it was a case of adding water and the fish! added all my fish within a week and massivly overstocked my first tank! had a few die but not loads which was lucky! i just left it to run for a few weeks like this doing about 90% water changes with no water conditioner

anyway when i finally sorted myself out and came online for help i got really good advice from another forum telling me to do 10% water changes per day, my levels where very similar to yours and doing 10% change (still thinking i knew best it was more 15-20 in all honesty but i now no that anything over 30 is probably going backwards not forwards) my tank touch wood has been running double zero's for ammonia and nitrite for months!

what youve got to understand is the bacteria in your filter converts the nitrites and ammonia which are very toxic for the fish into nitrates (dont confuse the two ) which are much less harmful, what learners like me and you dont realise at first is that doing huge water changes all the time doesnt give this bacteria a chance to generate itself and fill the water and filter because of fresh water being added all the time. Best thing to do in my opinion (although im sure i will be corrected haha) is doing a 10-15% water change at the same time every day, cut feeding down to once every 2 days and only a small amount (remember a fishes stomach is only about the size of its eye and they say they can last up to 2 weeks with no food ) and don't clean the filter at all unless sludge is actually slowing down the flow, if you need to clean the filter do it in the dirty tank water not tap water and dont clean it well just enough to free up the flow of water through the sponge!

i followed this advice and my tank is a million times better in just a few weeks!

hope this helps