Due to my disabilities, my friend and I have been changing tanks together for several months, we both understand the important of cycling a tank but I did the first tank on my own (without fish and with ammonia). Now when there is a possibility we may need to cycle again or if we just need some additional bacteria because we were getting a bunch more fish. We purchase Tetra Safe start Plus and it always works - we also sometime add part of a sponge or something like that from a cycled tank.
We do 75% water changes weekly. For some reason, the ammonia level on this tank was top of the scale to 8 - higher than I've ever seen it and there were NO dead fish, but a lot of debris. In fact the day before I removed a lot of the debris as a "mini-water change". Today we did our same water change routine but we decided that the biocubes were disgusting and beyond saving and I got a fresh package and decided that was equivalent to recycling and divided a bottle of Stafe Start between buckets of water when we were replacing the water. As instructed on the SafeStart package we didn't add anything else but we did forget to add one UNIQUE INGREDIENT that few people do ( and I get criticized a lot for doing it) but otherwise I could not be a fish keeper in this town in this town if I didn'tl - Neutral Regulator which brings the PH down to about 7. This is done because Topeka has an average Ph of 9.4 WAY too high to keep fish. It brings the water PH to around 7 with the right amount and it then slowly lowers itself during the week until the next water change and I add some more - how much more is a guess dependent on the current PH of the fishes water. I used to use PHup and PHdown and may go back to those - they are at least more straight forward than the first way. So I forgot to measure the PH or I would have seen it was 9.4 and done the PH reduction like the fish are used to.
So then we start to decorate the tank and the next thing we know we have fish dropping dead from all over the place. Fish having multiple siezures then recovering (or not). Except for the Dojo's they all appear dead. Then miraculously they start waking up again, one by one - some swim as if confused, some return to the "death state". One of our favorite fish because he's so sweet and cute is a Chocolate Gourami called "Mr Coffee". We cried because it appeared we lost Mr Coffee. The Dojo's were crazier than normal - they'd do their sleeping then suddenly fly (almost literally) around the tank - he actually pulled a net out of my assistant's hand. This whole event from life to death took about 10-15 minutes.
Then a stranger thing happened - they started to wake up, well some did. Out of 6 Glo-fish only 2 survived out of 6. All 4 of the dojo's survived. 2 of the 3 Kubotai Loach returned to life. , the two dwarf Gourami and 4 large Gourami didn't seem much affected at all. I lost both my Hillside Loaches, it just makes me sick. But get this - 30-45 minutes after "death" Mr Coffee also rose from the dead! The smallest fish in the aquarium survived!! But the next smallest - a Raspora didn't make it. She was one of the first fish I purchased and all her school mates have passed away. It'ts been a couple of hours so I removed the dead from the tank.
Friday we set up my new 50 gallon tank to house a group of fishes that I neither want or enjoy but nobody else would either and they were my responsibility. A couple of online stores sent me the wrong fish on my order and while they were all gourami's - they weren't dwarfs and grew 5-7inches long - all 5 of them. Two mated and 3 off spring survived and are nearing their parent size. Also when I was first looking at fish at the only local non-national retailer pet store rip-off specialist convinced me that a cichlid was a gourami because it had a spot on it's side. It grew to nearly a foot long. Well we put them all in the new tank and he in particular was doing dives and showing off, he must have settled in his favorite spot - a hollow log (resin) - I think he'd gotten too big because we had one other incident where we had to rescue him. Well this time the water was dim and settling down and I didn't see him struggle and this time he passed away. My fault - I new better than to put that log back in. The reason these fish were in this tank is that they are semi-aggressive (and they were but not seriously) and I didn't have others that size so I had to purchase a bigger tank than I ever planned on, Future fry, I'm sorry to say will get eaten, these fish are boring and nippy - I don't care for them. I'll retire my other tank, donate to charity etc. So TOO much death in the last few weeks. I'm tired of it.
So am I correct in guessing that this is my fault for forgetting to check the PH before we poured fresh water in? The ultra-high ammonia rating I got before we even started should have told me to check the PH level before starting, then we would have known something was up. On the other hand, these were instantaneous deaths and deaths with some seizures it all happened too fast to think logically and make a decision on what to do (I'd be a terrible ER doctor). I don't see any redness around the gills or eyes or should we expect to see further deaths? She loved the glo-fish and I just read that they are very suceptible to drastic PH changes. I just want to prepare my friend - we both have our favorite fish and special name for them but we always feel terrible when we lose any fish.
And as an aside - is there anyplace that sells extra large caves and cubby holes. Even the ones advertised as cichlids hideaways are WAY too small for many cichlids
We do 75% water changes weekly. For some reason, the ammonia level on this tank was top of the scale to 8 - higher than I've ever seen it and there were NO dead fish, but a lot of debris. In fact the day before I removed a lot of the debris as a "mini-water change". Today we did our same water change routine but we decided that the biocubes were disgusting and beyond saving and I got a fresh package and decided that was equivalent to recycling and divided a bottle of Stafe Start between buckets of water when we were replacing the water. As instructed on the SafeStart package we didn't add anything else but we did forget to add one UNIQUE INGREDIENT that few people do ( and I get criticized a lot for doing it) but otherwise I could not be a fish keeper in this town in this town if I didn'tl - Neutral Regulator which brings the PH down to about 7. This is done because Topeka has an average Ph of 9.4 WAY too high to keep fish. It brings the water PH to around 7 with the right amount and it then slowly lowers itself during the week until the next water change and I add some more - how much more is a guess dependent on the current PH of the fishes water. I used to use PHup and PHdown and may go back to those - they are at least more straight forward than the first way. So I forgot to measure the PH or I would have seen it was 9.4 and done the PH reduction like the fish are used to.
So then we start to decorate the tank and the next thing we know we have fish dropping dead from all over the place. Fish having multiple siezures then recovering (or not). Except for the Dojo's they all appear dead. Then miraculously they start waking up again, one by one - some swim as if confused, some return to the "death state". One of our favorite fish because he's so sweet and cute is a Chocolate Gourami called "Mr Coffee". We cried because it appeared we lost Mr Coffee. The Dojo's were crazier than normal - they'd do their sleeping then suddenly fly (almost literally) around the tank - he actually pulled a net out of my assistant's hand. This whole event from life to death took about 10-15 minutes.
Then a stranger thing happened - they started to wake up, well some did. Out of 6 Glo-fish only 2 survived out of 6. All 4 of the dojo's survived. 2 of the 3 Kubotai Loach returned to life. , the two dwarf Gourami and 4 large Gourami didn't seem much affected at all. I lost both my Hillside Loaches, it just makes me sick. But get this - 30-45 minutes after "death" Mr Coffee also rose from the dead! The smallest fish in the aquarium survived!! But the next smallest - a Raspora didn't make it. She was one of the first fish I purchased and all her school mates have passed away. It'ts been a couple of hours so I removed the dead from the tank.
Friday we set up my new 50 gallon tank to house a group of fishes that I neither want or enjoy but nobody else would either and they were my responsibility. A couple of online stores sent me the wrong fish on my order and while they were all gourami's - they weren't dwarfs and grew 5-7inches long - all 5 of them. Two mated and 3 off spring survived and are nearing their parent size. Also when I was first looking at fish at the only local non-national retailer pet store rip-off specialist convinced me that a cichlid was a gourami because it had a spot on it's side. It grew to nearly a foot long. Well we put them all in the new tank and he in particular was doing dives and showing off, he must have settled in his favorite spot - a hollow log (resin) - I think he'd gotten too big because we had one other incident where we had to rescue him. Well this time the water was dim and settling down and I didn't see him struggle and this time he passed away. My fault - I new better than to put that log back in. The reason these fish were in this tank is that they are semi-aggressive (and they were but not seriously) and I didn't have others that size so I had to purchase a bigger tank than I ever planned on, Future fry, I'm sorry to say will get eaten, these fish are boring and nippy - I don't care for them. I'll retire my other tank, donate to charity etc. So TOO much death in the last few weeks. I'm tired of it.
So am I correct in guessing that this is my fault for forgetting to check the PH before we poured fresh water in? The ultra-high ammonia rating I got before we even started should have told me to check the PH level before starting, then we would have known something was up. On the other hand, these were instantaneous deaths and deaths with some seizures it all happened too fast to think logically and make a decision on what to do (I'd be a terrible ER doctor). I don't see any redness around the gills or eyes or should we expect to see further deaths? She loved the glo-fish and I just read that they are very suceptible to drastic PH changes. I just want to prepare my friend - we both have our favorite fish and special name for them but we always feel terrible when we lose any fish.
And as an aside - is there anyplace that sells extra large caves and cubby holes. Even the ones advertised as cichlids hideaways are WAY too small for many cichlids
