Small Planted Tank With Fish Issues

[MtPansy]

Hey all!

I've been keeping a ten gallon for about a year and a half with a reasonable amount of success and I've recently decided to get a couple more tanks. To that end, I picked up a 3 gallon Eclipse with the goal of planting it heavily and keeping a few tetras. Set it up cycled about a week ago, stocked with a wisteria, another medium plant, and two dwarf mondo grasses (which I have since learned are not good submerged long-term) and 3 cardinal and 3 glowlight tetras. One cardinal died during the transfer, despite an extremely gradual and gentle drip-method, and a day later one glowlight seemed to be having severe swim bladder issues and soon passed away.

I came home tonight after a weekend away and another glowlight is having trouble keeping himself righted, and everyone else seems fairly weak and red in the gills. My levels are as such:

Ammonia: 0
Chlorine: 0
Nitrate: 5
Nitrite: 0
Alkalinity: 160
pH: 8.2

I suspect the issue here is the pH. That is the way it comes out of the tap, in addition to being extremely hard (300 ppm). It doesn't seem to hurt my other tank, but that one is stocked with tough fish (danios, a betta, cory cats, etc.) I would like to add CO2 to the 3 gal system to help the plants and address the pH, but I have no idea if I can do such a thing in a tank so small.

Any thoughts very much appreciated.

 

[Verminator89]

You certainly can use CO2 on a tank this small, perhaps liquid dosing would be best as there isnt alot of space to have a CO2 reactor. Easylife EasyCarbo or Flourish Excel would be usefull in adding CO2 to your tank.

Have you cycled the tank properly. 1 week sounds a very short time, i always cycle for atleast 3 weeks, preferably 4.

 

[waterdrop]

Hello MtPansy and Welcome to the freshwater new tank section!

It does indeed sound like nobody's introduced you to the "Magic of the Biofilter" and we're the ones who are good at doing that. Additionally, I'll go out on a limb and guess that you're giving us those water stats from paper strip tests. Am I wrong on all this?

Paper strip tests are worse than useless, they can cause you to make wrong decisions. You need to use a good liquid-reagent based test kit (one with little test tubes and bottles) to get somewhat better accuracy (at least accuracy good enough to be combined with knowledge that we pass around.) Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit.

Note that there's a good chance that you are actually in what we call a Fish-In Cycling Situation (I call it a "situation" when it wasn't originally intended by you!) Your first homework assignment here in our section is to read 3 articles in our Beginners Resource Center: 1st, The Nitrogen Cycle, 2nd, The Fish-In Cycle, and third, The Fishless Cycle (for background, since you're already past that possibility.)

I've put all this Tank Cycling stuff up front because if its needed, then its urgent and the members will help you with the details of good technique in water changes (the main work of a fish-in cycle) if needed.

The other issue you may have run in to is that the neons/cards have an unusual need that we observe in that they do a whole lot better when introduced to a tank that is 6 months old (that's not a typo).. It seems -unrelated- to whether the tank is cycled or not, its some other issue with new tanks. Its certainly not impossible to have success with them earlier but the changes of all of them doing really well go way up when a tank has been running this long. That being said, its true that both these types of fish can suffer loses during transfers (often a characteristic of fish that like large shoals and are small in body size.)

Agree with Verm about the plants. Good planted tank principles can be applied to any size of tank. The low-light technique (which is the one I practice) of using "liquid carbon" products like Flourish Excel or EasyCarbo is the easier approach in a small tank but I will point out that liquid carbons are not acually CO2 (they are a much, much more complicated molecule actually) and are ultimately not as good as CO2 or as versatile from the plant's point of view. On the other hand, the other technique that is shy of full-out pressurized CO2 is where you generate the CO2 via some sort of "DIY" method (often using fermentation) and those methods certainly have their problems too.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[MtPansy]

I want to thank both of you for being so helpful! I should have been more specific when I talked about cycling: I had set aside about 5 gallons of water from a cycled tank to fill the new one with, along with some used filter media and gravel. I saw no reason why this would not work, but it easily could not have.

I am indeed using the test strips for my levels, and it's disappointing to hear that they are useless (not least because that's 30 dollars down the drain.) I'll make sure to pick up the test kit you recommend. Despite the levels being good, I did a 50% change last night and it seems to have helped some (although the glowlight is still upside-down.)

I'll do some research on CO2, but right now it looks like liquid dosing is the best option, because the tank does not have too much room in it.

Do you have any recommendations for small, colourful fish that could go in such a tank until it's a bit older?

 

[waterdrop]

Water does not cycle, filters do. Using water from a previous tank is unnecessary but using mature media to seed the new filter is great. Ideally (for the future) the way to do it is to begin performing the steps of a fishless cycle on the filter but then add the mature media to the filter. You then "qualify" the filter by having it pass a series of tests that prove that it is cycled, same as we do for the end of a fishless cycle but with MM its usually just days. Nonetheless, MM is good even if you're in a fish-in situation.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[rhiannonk]

Hrm ... I don't know if I'm alone in thinking this but even though cardinals and glowlights are fairly small, I think a 3G is too small of a tank to keep them happy. Generally it would be a better idea to get 6 of one kind of tetra as opposed to 3 of 2 types, simply because they like being in groups of 6 or more of their own species. I think that three gallons would be more appropriate for a betta, maybe with some snails or something for the bottom.

Edit: Betta are colourful fish with lots of personality that would be happy in this size of a tank. If you are interested in keeping a small group of tetras, it may be more rewarding for you to pickup a 10G or 20G (you can find great deals on used tanks) so that you can stock more types of fish

 

[MtPansy]

Today the situation is still the same (4 alive but one struggling). I did not feed the tank this morning, and I don't plan to tomorrow either. I am doing daily 50% water changes. I went out and got the API master test kit, but the results for that tank are going to have to wait until tomorrow, because now my 10 gallon is having issues.

Actually, most of the tank is healthy (nitrates perhaps a little high) but the betta in it is not having a good time. He is listless, lying on the bottom or on a plastic plant near the water surface. His abdomen is swollen, and initially I thought he was just constipated, but on closer inspection it seems his eyes are bulging. The other inhabitants (silver tip tetras, danios, cory cats, and a snail) are all active and colourful. I am fasting this tank as well, and have performed a 50% water change with Prime to try and lessen the nitrates. Is there anything else I can do? I am reluctant to medicate without a diagnosis, and do not have a hospital tank at this time.

Thanks again. Someday I hope to contribute something other than my problems and ignorance to this community.

 

[waterdrop]

Usually we hope that some of our people experienced in diagnostics check in on the emergencies section, have you posted there? WD

 

[stubert]

With the co2 you can get literally a spray bottle which you attach some airline tubing too, my LFS has one which you dose once a day, lasts about 50 doses, for about 7 quid, not tried it yet though am going too soon

 

[waterdrop]

With the co2 you can get literally a spray bottle which you attach some airline tubing too, my LFS has one which you dose once a day, lasts about 50 doses, for about 7 quid, not tried it yet though am going too soon

I'd be interested in brand names of this sort of thing and also if anybody knows of very small co2 tanks that could be used not for continuous hookup for for manual gas releases for experiments. WD

 

[rhiannonk]

Nitrate levels aren't really that problematic until they get REALLY high. I would be more worried about nitrite and ammonia levels. These should be 0 ... any higher and you are risking damage to the fish, so they should be kept as low as possible until the tank is cycled.

 

[Tetra-Chris]

With the co2 you can get literally a spray bottle which you attach some airline tubing too, my LFS has one which you dose once a day, lasts about 50 doses, for about 7 quid, not tried it yet though am going too soon

I'd be interested in brand names of this sort of thing and also if anybody knows of very small co2 tanks that could be used not for continuous hookup for for manual gas releases for experiments. WD

Hi WD, not sure if it is what stubert is referring to, but in the UK I have seen something similar. The brand is TetraPlant and I believe the product is fully known as TetraPlant CO2 Optimat... It is basically a disposable CO2 canister that you are able to attach a piece of airline to, the airline then attaches to a plastic cylinder with a fine mesh on the top. The CO2 is added like an aerosol and fills up the cylinder and diffuses out.

 

[waterdrop]

Thanks very much Tetra-Chris, very helpful. WD

 

[RadaR]

They're pants. Not worth the money.

 

[waterdrop]

They're pants. Not worth the money.

Hi Radar, I know, I wasn't looking for any kind of "system" per se but have been looking around at the options for small handheld CO2 tanks with a pressure gauge and knob such that manual releases could be made into an upside down bottle in a plant holding tank. I observed a fellow doing this in an interesting SanFran shop and its intrigued me ever since. WD