Ani
New Member
I need some guidance on a water quality problem i've got. We've had a small 40 litre tank running for 3 months. After the first month, we added six red eye tetras to help the cycling and all was well. Then we had problems with an ancistrus fighting one of our plecs in our large 90 gallon tank so we move the ancistrus to the small tank with the red eyes. All was well and peaceful. Then we made a bad mistake. We added 6 platys and three fighters (one male, two females) to the small tank and overwhelmed our new filter and bacteria colony. I do daily water checks so noticed within 48 hours and prompty moved the 6 platys into our larger 90 gallon tank where they are living a happy life. This was about 1 month ago. Since then I have not been able to stabalise the cycle. We've not added any more fish but the water is still cloudy and smelly.
The tank is planted, and it has bogwood and rocks. We've got gravel and sand. I've treated the water with an Ammonia remover which solves the problem in the short-term but makes little difference in the long-run. Today our stats are as follows:
Ammonia: 1ppm
Nitrite: 0.25ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
Ph: 7.8
My LFS says that because of my ph, my ammonia level is not as dreadful as it sounds. Incredibly, I've had no fish deaths although I was concerned with a skin blotch on my ancistrus which I treated with an all-purpose bacterial and fugus infection treatment and he looks a lot better.
I am toying with the idea of either moving my red eyes into the main tank to ease the fish burden in the small tank or to add mature water from my main tank into my small tank. Thoughts would be appreciated.
The tank is planted, and it has bogwood and rocks. We've got gravel and sand. I've treated the water with an Ammonia remover which solves the problem in the short-term but makes little difference in the long-run. Today our stats are as follows:
Ammonia: 1ppm
Nitrite: 0.25ppm
Nitrate: 0ppm
Ph: 7.8
My LFS says that because of my ph, my ammonia level is not as dreadful as it sounds. Incredibly, I've had no fish deaths although I was concerned with a skin blotch on my ancistrus which I treated with an all-purpose bacterial and fugus infection treatment and he looks a lot better.
I am toying with the idea of either moving my red eyes into the main tank to ease the fish burden in the small tank or to add mature water from my main tank into my small tank. Thoughts would be appreciated.