Fishiemang
Fish Crazy
Do not follow my advice.
I am an idiot with giant bowls of water.
Apparently, I have spent a lot of time and money to reverse engineer the wheel. Tried to make it rounder, and it came out....well.....round.
Tinkering lately has shown me some follies in my ways. One aspect of nature I did not take into account is drainage. The natural filtering via layers of.Earth that clean and purify water. Sometimes, I am an.idiot. I miss some of the easiest aspects of.this crazy thing that is keeping of the aquatics.
My water keeping skills have waned over the years. Becoming jaded to constant, never ending work and.tossing.in all the chips in search of a new method has been a rocky road. Age is not being that kind either. Plus, well, I have become lazy I think.
My efforts have cost me some fish. Lemme explain....
What I do is a.sound philosophy, but the extremes I have taken it to have turned out to be an unfortunate education. A new pickle I need to find the path out of, with the least loss of aquatic critters. The downside to the extreme level I have take things to is starting to ring out in the wash, so to speak.
I took.measurements of my tanks a few weeks back. I checked params, and they were all aces. Gold standard as usual. I stumbled on another gadget I had forgotten I had. A TDS meter. I strolled around to my tanks with this little data machine and stuck it in the first tank. Here is what happened:
75 Gallon - 984ppm
30 Gallon - Over 1000ppm
38 Gallon - 847ppm
10 Gallon - 545ppm.
Tap - 137ppm
Now, the other params we test for were spot on. But I was curious about just how "thick" the water was. Dissolved minerals, fish parts, detritus, snail shells ect...
I was curious as to why I lost my entire ghost fish colonies. Then the snails thinned way out, with a handful of MTS remaining. I thought maybe it's the copper plumbing in the house I bought leeching into the water I was using.in these tanks. I strayed away from this idea because they proliferated for 2 years, up until a couple months ago. Not to mention the fish have been.seemingly not.excited about water top offs anymore, cept the mollies. They are crappin out kids like gangbusters. So I tested my tap water, and, it was.fine. Checked into local supply, no changes. It's been a crazy adventure.
Now here is where the "Do Not Follow My Advice" part comes into play....
I decided that there was much too much dissolved into the water column, so I did a single water change on each tank, the first in a planned series. About 20~25% each. All H E double hockey sticks broke loose.
No losses in my 75, but the fish have been acting unusual. Especially my peacock. Ain't seen my Krib in a few days now.come to think....
30 gallon lost 4 black mollies and 3 pea puffers. Not good. Lost them to so small water change I did here.
10 gallon, my EBJD seems to be blind. He eats occasionally, but just today I noticed that my bristlenose is in.dropsy, rapid breathing and fins are.deteriorated. It is quite possible it was simply the bloodworms I fed my EBJD, the extras he missed (again...seemingly blind, but reacts when I walk up). I'm sure that little fella won't survive the night.
38 gallon, lost several black mollies, almost immediately, and one of my tiger barbs (which by the time I noticed it, the other fish had picked the bones clean), and now it appears my last neon tetra is jot doing so well. This is now 3 weeks from that water change. The huge loss of mollies (who have since repopulated) immediately led me to cool it and.reassess. I went and got some Stress Coat for the tanks. It seemed to help a bit, but I don't expect.miracles from a bottle.
There are a few things I think my ideas are missing. It has got me to thinking about different filtration ideas, to better simulate nature. It has also been a slap in the face, really. By myself. The real question in.my head was, by letting the water ride, and.the amounts of TDS in the water, had it created a situation that the fish couldn't cope with even a small.drop that "fast"? I don't know.
All I know is I have recently lost several fish, and 2 are on the way out (the neon is 4 years old...no surprise there). It has me thinking also about quitting this hobby. Maybe I just ain't as into it as much as I was when I started all those years back. Maybe not to the scale I have right now. I don't know. Sooo many questions....with limbo answers....
So, my advice is to not follow my advice. At the very least, pick out the grains and discard the faults as seen fit. My ego has been bruised, and I prolly won't be around on here much, like lately. Failure sometimes, even as an almost old fart, can be disheartening. We'll see. Maybe I will get struck by lighting, and.come up with an.awesome.solution, but for now Ima just go and kick myself around for a bit. The little man in me got a but too rebellious, and now my fishies are paying the price. May have to change my name.from fishiemang to failuremang......it's not as catchy, but, has the right amount of clouds requiring an umbrella.......
I am an idiot with giant bowls of water.
Apparently, I have spent a lot of time and money to reverse engineer the wheel. Tried to make it rounder, and it came out....well.....round.
Tinkering lately has shown me some follies in my ways. One aspect of nature I did not take into account is drainage. The natural filtering via layers of.Earth that clean and purify water. Sometimes, I am an.idiot. I miss some of the easiest aspects of.this crazy thing that is keeping of the aquatics.
My water keeping skills have waned over the years. Becoming jaded to constant, never ending work and.tossing.in all the chips in search of a new method has been a rocky road. Age is not being that kind either. Plus, well, I have become lazy I think.
My efforts have cost me some fish. Lemme explain....
What I do is a.sound philosophy, but the extremes I have taken it to have turned out to be an unfortunate education. A new pickle I need to find the path out of, with the least loss of aquatic critters. The downside to the extreme level I have take things to is starting to ring out in the wash, so to speak.
I took.measurements of my tanks a few weeks back. I checked params, and they were all aces. Gold standard as usual. I stumbled on another gadget I had forgotten I had. A TDS meter. I strolled around to my tanks with this little data machine and stuck it in the first tank. Here is what happened:
75 Gallon - 984ppm
30 Gallon - Over 1000ppm
38 Gallon - 847ppm
10 Gallon - 545ppm.
Tap - 137ppm
Now, the other params we test for were spot on. But I was curious about just how "thick" the water was. Dissolved minerals, fish parts, detritus, snail shells ect...
I was curious as to why I lost my entire ghost fish colonies. Then the snails thinned way out, with a handful of MTS remaining. I thought maybe it's the copper plumbing in the house I bought leeching into the water I was using.in these tanks. I strayed away from this idea because they proliferated for 2 years, up until a couple months ago. Not to mention the fish have been.seemingly not.excited about water top offs anymore, cept the mollies. They are crappin out kids like gangbusters. So I tested my tap water, and, it was.fine. Checked into local supply, no changes. It's been a crazy adventure.
Now here is where the "Do Not Follow My Advice" part comes into play....
I decided that there was much too much dissolved into the water column, so I did a single water change on each tank, the first in a planned series. About 20~25% each. All H E double hockey sticks broke loose.
No losses in my 75, but the fish have been acting unusual. Especially my peacock. Ain't seen my Krib in a few days now.come to think....
30 gallon lost 4 black mollies and 3 pea puffers. Not good. Lost them to so small water change I did here.
10 gallon, my EBJD seems to be blind. He eats occasionally, but just today I noticed that my bristlenose is in.dropsy, rapid breathing and fins are.deteriorated. It is quite possible it was simply the bloodworms I fed my EBJD, the extras he missed (again...seemingly blind, but reacts when I walk up). I'm sure that little fella won't survive the night.
38 gallon, lost several black mollies, almost immediately, and one of my tiger barbs (which by the time I noticed it, the other fish had picked the bones clean), and now it appears my last neon tetra is jot doing so well. This is now 3 weeks from that water change. The huge loss of mollies (who have since repopulated) immediately led me to cool it and.reassess. I went and got some Stress Coat for the tanks. It seemed to help a bit, but I don't expect.miracles from a bottle.
There are a few things I think my ideas are missing. It has got me to thinking about different filtration ideas, to better simulate nature. It has also been a slap in the face, really. By myself. The real question in.my head was, by letting the water ride, and.the amounts of TDS in the water, had it created a situation that the fish couldn't cope with even a small.drop that "fast"? I don't know.
All I know is I have recently lost several fish, and 2 are on the way out (the neon is 4 years old...no surprise there). It has me thinking also about quitting this hobby. Maybe I just ain't as into it as much as I was when I started all those years back. Maybe not to the scale I have right now. I don't know. Sooo many questions....with limbo answers....
So, my advice is to not follow my advice. At the very least, pick out the grains and discard the faults as seen fit. My ego has been bruised, and I prolly won't be around on here much, like lately. Failure sometimes, even as an almost old fart, can be disheartening. We'll see. Maybe I will get struck by lighting, and.come up with an.awesome.solution, but for now Ima just go and kick myself around for a bit. The little man in me got a but too rebellious, and now my fishies are paying the price. May have to change my name.from fishiemang to failuremang......it's not as catchy, but, has the right amount of clouds requiring an umbrella.......