Whats Going Wrong ?

[Royster]

hey guys,
my 60 litre tank has been going the very best since april last year with only 1 or 2 deaths and the grass/plants were going great but recently ive had 3 unexplained deaths within the last fortnight and my grass and my anubia have started to develop a furry looking algae on them and it looks like it's killing it or that the grass/anubia has died and has started rotting.

a friend has borrowed my test kits and is leaving them back tonight so i can test the water but it was always fine before, the nitrates were climbing but i was changing 5 litres to combat that at the start of every month.

i'll be able to explain more later when i get the test results but what have i been doing wrong.

fish are feed once a day
lights are on 5-6 hours a day
moonlight kit on maybe 2 hours at most.

 

[TomShootsPhoto]

Fish should have morning and night, usually at least 8-12 hours of light.

What are your water parameters?

 

[the_lock_man]

You're doing roughly 10% water changes monthly. I suspect that's where your problem is, I don't think that's enough to keep nitrates under control. I would love to see the nitrate test result when you get it.

Nitrates are fine under 100ppm, but once you start going over that, things decline.

 

[Royster]

Well I've found my problems.

First my amonnia and nitrate levels have rocketed, I don't know if this is due to my ottos dying and me not being able to find one of them, or because my grass is started to go brown at the bottom and no matter how hard I try I can't remove it all.

I've done two 10l water changes and it's brought the level down but not to within 'safe' levels.