What the h*^$ is going on here

[totalbolshevik]

Okay, brace yourself because it's a long story. I started out with a 50 gallon tank that belonged to my father. He had given me the aquarium and it seemed to be going well. A week or so after I had gotten the tank, I started having problems. First, I noticed that they weren't eating. This went on for another day. The next day when I went up to feed them (or try to) I found that one of them had died. So I took some water in to the lfs to get it tested. I had zero or almost zero ammo and nitrite , but the Ph was pretty low, somewhere below 6.0. (the test they did didn't register below this) They told me that the nitrAte levels were probably so high that they had become toxic to the fish. It made sense, since my dad had cleaned it no more than once every three months in the 25 years that he had had it. So, the store sold me a gravel vac (this was back when I REALLY knew nothing about fish) and told me to go clean the gravel. So I did. Not good. The water in the tank looked literally like mud from all the stuff stirred up from the bottom. I waited several hours for the water to clear up and tested it again. It was still the same, so I called the lfs. They told me that it was going to take a lot of cleans to make it a healthy environment for the fish. The next day, I went to the lfs and, long story short, ended up buying a new tank. I got new gravel for the tank, and moved all the fish into it. The fish were:

3 Congo tetras
2 Bronze cories
1 Panda cory
2 red wagtail platys
2 rummynose tetras
1 lyretail molly
2 tetras of unknown type
1 suckermouth cat

Soooo... that's a grand total of 14 fish. Don't worry, normally I would not cycle a tank with that many fish. But, as I didn't have another tank to put some of them in, I really had no choice. In the end, two of them died, a rummynose tetra and the molly, but the tank got cycled all right. Like I said before, I had no ammonia or nitrite until this all started. If you want, you can go back and find my old thread, which is still there, titled "Holy Crap, water looks like milk." I think there's some stuff there that I didn't mention.

 

[wetwetwet]

Hi total.....

Still not completely clear on this one.... - did you keep the old filter?

A new tank cycling may not show ammo spike till three weeks+!... - even if you were using the old filter, how long had it been turned off for during the move? - if this was much longer than an hour then the bacterial colonies would have started to die and not be able to support the biological load when turned back on (may well have added to it)

Long established tanks are quite stable and the fish are used to these conditions....
any change can upset this balance and stress the fish....

Its possible that the move massively upset the biological balance of the tank and forced it into another cycle (and making conditions quite inhospitable) - which isn't going to sort itself out in a few weeks.....

One other thing to bear in mind is that if anyone has a problem it is worth putting all the facts/history down in each new thread, as it is difficult (impossible) for people to remember individual circumstances as there is so many problems/questions trying to be adressed here each day.... and its easy to loose track....(well. for me .. )

Small details can make all the difference to help people work out what can be wrong and you cann't blame people for making suggestions/recomendations based on what they've read in one thread.....

 

[totalbolshevik]

No, I did not keep the old filter, but I did use half the water from the old tank. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the lfs told me that I could have killed off my bacteria from over cleaning, hence the tank had to recycle itself, etc. Is this at all possible? It seems like it would be awfully hard to kill off all the bacteria. Furthermore, won't changing water every other day just slow the cycling process down? I know it makes it less hard on the fish, but is it worse to have a longer-term problem, or one that is worse but shorter-lived?

 

[wetwetwet]

m8 the vast majoity of the benificial bacteria live in the filter - and very little in the water itself - and some in the gravel and decor....

If it was just water that was kept (or even some gravel aswell) then your tank and new filter would have to go through a cycle - but has had a little kick start....

Yes WC's will slow the cycle down but not much - excessive ammo (and nitrite) could be much more detrimental - keep testing...

Watch how much you are feeding untill things have settled down aswell...

 

[totalbolshevik]

Yeah, I've been feeding them only once a day. I'm not that worried about the general health of the fish, because they seem pretty healthy considering what the conditions of the water are. I am worried about the one platy with the wierd swimming... seems like he should be dead by now... Do you think he will make it?