Problem With New Aquarium

[mark4785]

I will have to contact the aquatics store to ask exactly what I bought. It resembles red-moor more than grape-wood in that grape-wood seems to have dark knots at various points. The piece I have is a light wood with no variations in colour. The piece cost me 75.00 British Pounds so my expectation is that it would be suitable for use in an aquarium with fish!
 
If the fish start gasping again I will take them out immediately, remove the wood and do a 75%+ water change regardless.

 

[Byron]

I will have to contact the aquatics store to ask exactly what I bought. It resembles red-moor more than grape-wood in that grape-wood seems to have dark knots at various points. The piece I have is a light wood with no variations in colour. The piece cost me 75.00 British Pounds so my expectation is that it would be suitable for use in an aquarium with fish!
 
If the fish start gasping again I will take them out immediately, remove the wood and do a 75%+ water change regardless.

 
Where we buy our wood is not a guarantee of problem-free wood.  I only buy wood from reliable fish stores, but in addition to the fungus problem I earlier outlined, back in 1998 I had another serious issue and lost fish, due to some toxin leeching from a chunk of wood that had been in the tank for over a year.
 
We don't know where this wood comes from, by which I mean, we have no idea as to the "pollutants" in some far-flung corner of the world.  Wood absorbs any liquid it comes into contact with, along with pathogens and fungi.
 
I see no reason not to remove the wood temporarily, do the water change, and see the results.  You can always put it back--and then see if the same occurs again.  The fish are worth it, surely?

 

[mark4785]

The fish are behaving normally now. Having thought about what may have caused the haze more I think the introduction of overly dirty filter media from the pond may have caused an heterotrophic bacterial explosion even without the presence of ammonia. The ammonia and nitrite readings are consistently reading 0 ppm; the Seneye reader device is showing a reading of 0.014 ppm of total ammonia.
 
I have added more filter media from the pond on the assumption that the oxygen issue would have killed off any nitrifying bacteria from the first round of pond sponges that I added. This time I have added some filter media that resembles a pipe structure and which had no chunks of dirt stuck to it.
 
The pet store as assured me that many of their customers use Red Moor wood and, according to him, it has never been associated with a white haze. He had never heard of Grape wood.

 

[Byron]

You may well have brought bacteria (the types causing the bloom) in from the pond, that makes sense.  As for wood, no one can be so definite.  It only takes one piece.  I have tons of wood and only twice have I had issues in 25 years, but both could have wiped out my fish if I had caught them.
 
BTW, nitrifying bacteria are not the delicate critters we used to be told.  Have a read of this for interest.
http/www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=4780&utm_source=PFK_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=February_10_2012&utm_term=Think_you_know_filter_bacteria?_Dream_on…&utm_content=html
 
And in established aquatic systems, it is actually not bacteria but archaea that play the dominant role according to research:
http/journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023281

 

[Katanafish]

Hey, just wanted to add that last week I set up a brand new 55 gal. I let the tank run for 2 days without issue. I then placed one very small (3") Weather Loach in the tank and within 1 day the water had turned super-cloudy. The Weather Loach did not seem to be negatively affected, but I wanted to be cautious, so I transferred the loach back to it's original tank. Removing the fish appeared to help the situation and the cloudiness gradually receded over the next couple of days. Although my loach seemed to love the new tank, I did feel bad that I may have put it in unnecessary danger and have instead picked up a bottle of ammonia and started dosing the tank and monitoring levels every day.
 
Something of note is that I did seed the new aquarium filter with half the filter sponge from my established tank - does not appear to have helped much at all - but perhaps 10 days is too soon to tell. It would seem that even when seeding a filter with media from established system and adding Fluval "Cycle" each day it still takes several weeks to get going.

 

[mark4785]

Hey, just wanted to add that last week I set up a brand new 55 gal. I let the tank run for 2 days without issue. I then placed one very small (3") Weather Loach in the tank and within 1 day the water had turned super-cloudy. The Weather Loach did not seem to be negatively affected

 
 
It seems almost like this 'heterotrophic bacteria' that apparently lives in the water column responds to any sort of energy source (i.e. fish urine, filter dirt) by oxidising it heavily. I believe that when something is oxidised heavily, you end up with more carbonic acid as an end result of the oxidation. This explains my lower than normal pH; there was a lot of dissolved carbonic acid.
 
If the above is actually happening for sure I should be able to avoid having this issue repeat by reducing feeding, doing small daily water changes and never placing excess sources of energy, this being filter sponge detritus, into the filter system UNTIL the nitrifying bacteria in the filter system can out compete the heterotrophic bacteria for energy. I've been employing this technique for last several days and the fish are extremely happy, feeding and are still not surfacing.
 
Additionally, i've also dropped the water temperature so that it can hold more dissolved oxygen (even though the oxygen levels are currently healthy).

 

[mark4785]

 
Something of note is that I did seed the new aquarium filter with half the filter sponge from my established tank - does not appear to have helped much at all - but perhaps 10 days is too soon to tell. It would seem that even when seeding a filter with media from established system and adding Fluval "Cycle" each day it still takes several weeks to get going.

 
 
When I used to employ the fishless cycle method it used to take about 2 months for me to have a healthy colony of filter bacteria capable of converting all of the pure ammonia dose back down to 0 ppm in a 12 hour period. When I started incorporating established pond sponges in my new aquariums during my fishless cycles I found that all the ammonia that I dosed was converted to nitrite immediately in a 12 hour period but nitrite conversion got stuck.
 
Thankfully I'm now testing my aquarium water daily and I'm dealing with a huge volume of water so I'm confident I will be able to detect any nitrogen cycle blips. Also, I will be placing a series of plants into the aquarium which will help reduce toxins.