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Argh gently caress this tank. A few weeks on after the first two disasters and the water parameters are all good again, I got a few cherry shrimp to get going again. Two days later they're all dead just like the previous batch. What the gently caress.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:45
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Going to break down this tank again, shove all the plants in a jar or something ugh.
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Dec 5, 2016 22:53
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This scarily reminds me of my attempt at shrimp. In my case, I believe my heater was running too hot. The original theory was that there was copper in my city eater. However, testing showed no copper.
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Dec 6, 2016 02:04
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Others who failed to keep cherry shrimp? Thank god, thought I was alone. I chalked mine up to high lead levels in my tap water. My final attempt started yesterday. Established celestial pearl danio tank, running RODI water remineralized with Salty Shrimp GH/KH+, 6 Blue Dream shrimp added yesterday. Fingers crossed.
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Dec 6, 2016 03:34
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Something's hosed up along the way. Going to throw out all the substrate and driftwood and filter material, get a whole new bunch of those. Scrub the hell out of the tank and plants before starting again. I dont know what the hell happened here because I've had two previous thanks with thriving, massive cherry colonies.
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Dec 6, 2016 03:36
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I got almost all my original 12 RCS and their spawn killed by doing a big water change to my already soft water nano with RODI water  . Moved the 2 male and 2 female survivors, in rather bad shape (hiding and not wanting to move at all) in a hurry to another tank. Lost one male, the rest got better in hours and within a week the two females were berried. Now we've got about 70 and they keep breeding, so fingers crossed that nothing else wipes them out. They are hardy in their own way (some 1 week old shrimplets survived my tearing down of the tank and the nitrite spike that followed, I had no idea anything living was still there) but if something goes wrong, they all go down as one. I have lost them to both too soft water and too hard water. They are supposed to thrive around GH8, but nope, mine die. Keep it at GH6, which is actually low for them, they breed like rabbits and are active and happy. Anything lower, dead shrimp again. I suspect the original breeder had them in soft water and the ones who survived were the ones that adapted to it, because every source I can find suggests raising the water hardness. They are a bit hit-or-miss creatures in terms of what makes them happy or dead, and there's not much in between the two states.
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Dec 6, 2016 15:35
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Yeah a big water change killed my RCS and my chameleon shrimp too, although they didn't die straight away, and they weren't really thriving beforehand. I'd been doing water changes by setting the end of the siphon (reverse airstone/airline for shrimp safety) at the level I wanted, then walking away to let it slowly drain however the airstone slipped in much too deep leaving less than 20% of the original water. I was reasonably sure I'd remineralised the new water properly but if I'd have been thinking I would have just tipped some of the old water back in. Not sure if it was wrong water, or too cold, or what but they were never the same after that and just slowly died off. I think there was some kind of shrimp disease going on and that combined with the shock water change finished them. This kind of scared me off from keeping shrimp in nano tanks, I've got my most recent shrimps in a 100 litre tank and they seem to be doing okay. They're some kind of native paratya shrimp and they seem happy in with my corydoras, I've seen the third generation begin as some of the youngsters are now big enough to be berried so hopefully they will form a good colony.Synthbuttrange posted:Something's hosed up along the way. Going to throw out all the substrate and driftwood and filter material, get a whole new bunch of those. Scrub the hell out of the tank and plants before starting again. Good luck starting over! Something I just thought of that I wonder if it would have affected your tank - stray voltage/current leaking in the tank? I remember reading about it as a potential issue in aquariums way back when I first started out, but I haven't really come across much about it since then. No idea how to test for it (apart from maybe checking out the cables) or how it would affect your livestock, is it possible it could be low enough that you can't feel it zap you but it could still be doing some harm? Your invisible killer is a bit of a mystery but we had an electrical arc explosion at work today when some idiot cut a power cable with a pair of scissors so I've had electricity on the brain all day. 240v can vaporise parts of some scissors, maybe 12v can irritate shrimps and snails to death? I reckon you covered pretty much everything else that could have been wrong already. I went out for dinner with my parents straight after work and spent a bit of time around there - loaned some Seachem Clarity for mum to try in her peasoup algae pond, and 2 capfuls got it crystal clear overnight so she wanted to show me how it looked - very impressive. Got home to find I was missing a penguin tetra. I'd noticed the adult size tetras being frisky earlier in the week, 2 of them had paired up and seemed to be bullying the third one a little so I was thinking that very soon I would swap the tetras into the big tank, and move the otos into the smaller tank so the aggro and peaceful fish would finally be separated. Looks like I left it too late for penguin tetra #3, as it seems the other two actually killed him. From how much the snails had left, I think he died during the day so I wouldn't have been able to rescue him if I'd come home from dinner earlier. I ended up spending rest of the evening moving fish and doing water changes. Better late than never. I hope the otos will survive the move into the smaller tank, the water parameters were close but not identical. But I figure they'll recover quicker without aggressive fish around stressing them out and mistakenly trying to bully them. I've moved the remaining guppies out of that tank too as I think they would just steal the otos repashy food. I hadn't wanted to move the big fish to the big tank where the younger tetras were yet, I'd hoped to give them more time to grow. Turns out I needn't have worried. As soon as I put the first big tetra in the smaller ones crowded around him and started following him around like he'd always been their lord and master and he seemed to love it. The second remaining big tetra has taken to hiding inside the pack of smaller tetras. Even if they do get shirty with each other, with a school that size (now 17 tetras) the aggression will probably be much less or at least well dispersed and now there is a lot more room for evasive manoeuvres.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:12
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I had a similar issue with my cherry shrimp. They thrived for about a year and then started dying off and never recovered. I couldn't even keep ghost shrimp in that tank, they would all just die after a month or two. Something definitely changed with my water, but recently I put a betta in that same tank and he immediately got some kind of horrible, stubborn fin rot. I treated him, then moved him, a mystery snail, and some new ghost shrimp to a new, bigger tank. All was fine for the past month or so, but my betta's fin rot came back last week with a vengeance and suddenly the shrimp started dying again. There must be some kind of lovely bacteria killing them and my fish brought it to the new tank with him. Whoops. At least now I know why they were dying even if it took me more than a year to figure it out  Might be worth looking into for anyone else who's having similar issues since without fish it was impossible for me to tell what the shrimp were actually dying from.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:37
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So I just picked up a 55 gallon with stand the other day for free.99 probably going to have to wait until after the holidays to actually set it up just because of space issues at the moment. I was thinking maybe doing angel fish in it freshwater but I am completely open to ideas any suggestions?
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Dec 6, 2016 19:23
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I'm all about the rainbow fish lately. Check out turquoise, red and boeseman's rainbows. They are all beautiful fish IMO
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Dec 6, 2016 22:05
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Been fishing tiny guppies all week because both moms gave birth within five days of each other . Most of the younger ones (2 days old by my count) are fast, shy, almost translucent ~1cm things who hide in the bushes and run like hell if they see anything appoaching (like the net). This actually makes them easier to catch if you scare them into the wall and corner them with the net, then touch the crystal, they'll gladly jump inside thinking something is going to eat them and the net is a convenient hiding place . But one of them has learned the joys of free swimming, because I just saw him chilling in the middle of the aquarium, in plain sight of everyone. Including the xiphos, who can and will make a hearty meal of him if they see him. Can't catch him because the net doesn't fit where he is and he refuses to be scared into a more accesible place, so fingers crossed he's actually smart enough to avoid ending up as fish food  . At least the platys and pencilfish did completly ignore him...
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Dec 6, 2016 22:33
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My filter's motor keeps making horrendous noises, and I think it's time to change it before it dies a death. What's the best way to do this without loving my cycle? I have two years' worth of delicious filter bacteria and my parameters are great. I want to upgrade the filter so that the next one doesn't die in two years, which means I'm not certain the sponge will be able to fit neatly in the new one.
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Dec 8, 2016 18:16
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Firstly I'd seriously consider getting a new impeller for your existing filter or checking whether the impeller shaft is broken and replacing that - you don't want it to seize and then have no filter at all! When that happened to the internal filter of the goldfish tank at work the end result was that the motor became a heater instead of a motor and the tank water got quite warm. Once you do get a new filter, there's no reason you can't run two side by side for a while to allow the new one a chance to populate some bacteria, and then once you are ready to switch you can dump whatever media fits from the old one into the new one as well. There's usually extra space in filters for additional media to what is supplied with the filter (assuming we're talking canisters here, and thats if any was supplied at all!). It's not a waste of money to try repairing the old filter motor since at least then you'll have an extra one spare in case of emergencies.
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Dec 8, 2016 19:51
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I'll add too that if the impeller is clean and in good condition, a little bit of vaseline (pure petroleum jelly) can be used to lubricate it to no ill effect on your livestock (PROBABLY). For real, do your own research before doing this so you can blame yourself, not me. I did the research, saw nothing opposing it, did it, and it worked a charm and my fish and plants continued doing well, including some fry.
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Dec 8, 2016 19:59
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Any tips on catching fish in a large heavily planted tank? I have a couple of junior Leopard Bushfish in the 300L I posted a couple of pages ago. They were moved in as a temporary re-home and now need to move on to there owners new tank. I had a go on Wednesday with no luck, and I'm going to have another go over the weekend. I tried leaving the nets in to get them used to it, and caught lots of tigers bards, and I tried making a plastic bottle fish trap, and caught lots of tiger barbs. Bushfish however remain elusive.
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Dec 9, 2016 16:18
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It took me 3 days of multiple attempts to get the final guppy out of my 100L planted tank and the only way I could catch him was to distract him with food then swoop the net in from out of the water, getting it under him and lifting up - swooping sideways just seems to give them a chance to show off how fast they can swim. Any time the net was in the water he just vanished. I tried catching him while he was groggy from sleeping but they seem to snap out of that pretty fast once they work out whats going on - probably wouldn't work at all for leopard bushfish since they're a bit nocturnal aren't they? Just started getting organised for the weekly waterchange and noticed a dribble of water coming from the tank stand of one tank, panicked at first thinking the tank was leaking. It looks like its a pretty slow trickle coming out of a join in the hose where it comes back to the tank from the filter. I knew that join leaked a little and I'd set it up so that it would drip back into the tank but somehow that arrangement no longer lines up quite right so it was trickling down the back of the tank, pooling around the side then running forwards and the puddle had just gotten big enough to start spilling over the edge so it wasn't as bad as it looked. But still, water level was down a couple of cm and I reckon it was easily 5 litres worth on the stand and on the floor. Ugh. At least its hot and dry here right now so it should dry up pretty fast.
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Dec 10, 2016 16:18
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Just got my hands on four juvenile laetacara dorsigera or red breasted acaras. I've never seen them before in any of my LFS and had to have them.
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Dec 11, 2016 00:50
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A giant dragonfly nymph the size of my thumb has eaten one of my patio pond danios  I forgot we get those here, I bet they were munching guppy fry in my other pond and I just never saw them because the water was too murky. I'd been thinking about putting some rosy barbs out in that pond but not if they'll just get eaten. The fish that died was a kind of derpy long fin danio that couldn't swim that well so maybe rosy barbs would be more robust? I do like dragonflies, so I don't want to get rid of the nymph.
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Dec 12, 2016 07:38
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Synthbuttrange posted:Something's hosed up along the way. Going to throw out all the substrate and driftwood and filter material, get a whole new bunch of those. Scrub the hell out of the tank and plants before starting again. where are you getting your cherries from? i've had trouble with my colonies collapsing until i started getting cherries from different shops (the only way i've been able to keep a colony going is to add 3-4 cherries every time i get supplies and from different shops, my theory is that most shops breed them out back and the shrimp are pretty inbred)
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Dec 12, 2016 08:39
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Yeah, actually left it for a little longer expecting the last two to cark, but hey no they're plodding along fine just fine now. Another mystery! Water parameters are all fine and they're happy as inverts can be. Maybe the tank they came from was awful and that was a huge shock? Maybe I should acclimatize for hours. I make this claim because when I went in on the weekend to get some more snails and when we got there everything was dead in murky yellow water. "Oh... I guess I'll come back later" Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 09:11
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I ain't even mad that my male peacock gudgeon refuses to spawn with the smaller female. He's made his mind up who he likes, and they make a cute couple. http://i.imgur.com/m0a1fHY.gifv
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Dec 14, 2016 17:17
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After this was filmed, the gudgeons spawned and I swapped in a new tube hoping to trick the male into spawning with the small but extremely swollen-with-eggs female. And this was a success! They spawned again last night and the small female gudgeon looks a lot better. So I've taken that tube back out and put the first tube back for the male to sit on, since I already have 2 batches of fry from the larger female. One of the eggs from the spawn 2 nights ago came detatched from the tube so I scooped it up and had a look under the microscope to see what was going on: http://i.imgur.com/MfASTpg.gifv To the naked eye this just looked like a clear globby egg. But that little guy is raring to go so I put him back in the breeder box.
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Dec 16, 2016 11:50
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Stoca Zola posted:One of the eggs from the spawn 2 nights ago came detatched from the tube so I scooped it up and had a look under the microscope to see what was going on: Very cool!
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Dec 16, 2016 15:44
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Some notes on spawning peacock gudgeons. I think what happens is the gudgeon fry stay in their little egg on a stalk cave zone as long as possible and don't come out until the egg sac is gone and they're free swimming. The first batch of fry I had, I took the spawning tube out to the breeder box straight away and had an airstone running so that flow would travel past the end of the tube to provide oxygenation to the eggs. I think I had it too strong as the fry came out early and were lolling about in egg sac mode. No harm done, they are quite vigorous now. I let the male sit on the next spawn for a few days and didn't provide additional flow after I removed the tube and the fry only emerged once they were in free swimming mode. The third spawn I placed back in the tank and the male was still sitting on it today although I did see some fry about in the tank so some are ready to go. The fourth spawn are still in the tube but I expect to see them tomorrow if they progress at the same rate as the ones the male has been tending. Today I had some definite success weaning at least one of the adult gudgeons off live food and on to flake, I'm trying seachem shrimp flakes as they have previously refused sera flakes and NLS mini pellets. They have also refused freeze dried tubifex and freeze dried brine shrimp. I'm out of frozen bloodworms (and I'm not convinced they haven't been a disease vector in my tanks so I won't get them again for a while) but freeze dried blood worms weren't successful either. They're definitely only attracted to moving food of a certain size, the brine shrimp are too big and are ignored. The tubifex is right sized but they spit it out even if I soak it first. Quite heartening then to see a gudgeon strike at a sinking flake as it wafts past, suck on it a bit, then chomp a piece off. Shrimp must taste right, maybe? I don't know what I would have done food wise if I hadn't already got a grindal worm colony started. I didn't get them with gudgeons in mind, they were supposed to be a corydoras treat, but to start with that has been the only food the gudgeons reliably eat. They do eat mosquito larva and I have some tubs of water outside for collecting those but I'd rather be able to feed a variety and it's kind of lovely encouraging mosquitos to hang around the house. It will be interesting to see if the tank raised fry are better at eating artificial fish foods than their parents, perhaps their fussiness at eating is why they are not more popular in the hobby? It certainly isn't hard to breed them and the fry so far have been numerous and easy to raise. They seem fine eating powdered foods, although, as with their parents, they won't eat from the surface and wait for the food to waft past them. I'm now using air stones to keep the food moving in the water column and I think this has helped keep them well fed. They seem to like microworms too. Anyway maybe they are not competitive eaters in a community? I was trying to soak a cube of tubifex for my guppies to eat to break up into bits for fairer distribution. I found that once a guppy latched on to the tubifex I could lift them right out of the water and they would not let go. They are very serious about food, I'm pretty sure peacock gudgeons mixed with guppies would result in the gudgeons starving.
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Dec 18, 2016 18:06
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Well, things changed. I had to put one of my shubies down. He had a tumor that started to get out of hand till he was always hiding and refused to eat, eventually he started swimming sideways. After that te other started swimming back and forth along the front of the tank all day every day, so I guess he needed a tankmate and the nerites weren't cutting it. So I got an orange Comet veil tail and a yellow Comet. I also got a new air pump that really kicks out some air so the under gravel filter should be working better than before and upgraded one of the filters to an Aqueon 50 and loaded both with bioballs. Newer phone, still not great with pics, but better than the old one The tank as it sits now  The veil and some shubie butt  And the yellow comet playing with an extra ball. He seems to love that thing and pushes it all over the tank  I've got a buddy at work who has a home pond but never got around to stocking it, so I've got a future place for these guys to go all lined up
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Dec 24, 2016 13:29
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I'm really proud of my male peacock gudgeon! After the first 2 or 3 spawns where the eggs just got eaten (possibly by him, or he got sick of guarding them and the females ate them), he has raised this batch all the way to free-swimming fry. I also saw him ejecting a tiny snail from his cave by carrying it in his mouth then spitting it out, which was super cute. The fry stayed in the tube a lot longer than any of the previous batches that I'd moved to breeder boxes, so I think they got maximum care this time. The "cave" he used this time was an L shape and I think he might have felt more secure in there, even when I moved it to encourage him to get out and eat, no matter where I put it down in the tank he'd hunt it down and go back in and get back to work tending to the fry. So he was a lot more determined this time to see it through to the end. I've put a bit of fry food into the tank now that the fry are hanging around near the surface but I think they will struggle to get a decent amount of food since its a 15g tank and it will be hard to get a decent density of food without polluting it. I've put some extra plants in so there is more cover for them too but the largest female is patrolling like a shark so I don't know if there will be many left by tomorrow. I did see a solo "old" fry again yesterday from a previous spawning so it is possible that some of this batch will survive, and the two breeder boxes full of fry are still healthy and going on strong.
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Dec 24, 2016 19:09
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Hi, all! Just got back into the freshwater fish game after a couple of year hiatus. My husband and I bought a house this year, so since we won't be moving for at least the foreseeable future, I decided it was time! I got a 29 gallon planted tank with a filter good for a 50 gallon tank. Thus far, I have it stocked with 8 various cory catfish, 6 Blackline Rasboras, and 5 Long-finned Zebra Danios (naturally all but one blur are hiding in the attached picture). I'm going to be getting some Orange Sakura Shrimp in the next week or so from a local breeder, and then I'll be stocked up.   I just love them.  I've got four cats, and they're all thankful for the extra kitty TV and don't try to get on the lid (thankfully). Pictured is O'Malley, who spends a good portion of an hour a day at least staring at my fishies.  
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Dec 29, 2016 02:07
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Is a pH of ~8.5 too high to keep neon tetras, danios, or platys? My city water is very alkaline and I'm wondering what the best option is to lower it (if necessary). I've heard varying advice from "fish don't care about pH" to "keep them within their suggested range" so I'm curious.
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Jan 4, 2017 16:02
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In my experience it's usually more important to keep the pH steady (at whatever it currently is) than it is to try to move it to a set range, especially since the fish you mentioned tend to be hardy anyway. The most important water parameters for overall fish health would be your nitrate levels and (particularly when you're cycling) your ammonia and nitrite levels. If you're breeding it might be a different matter, but for a general basic aquarium I'd usually tell people not to worry about pH.
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Jan 4, 2017 18:25
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Zebra danios are hardy and very adaptable as far as I know, others such as celestial pearl danios might be a bit more fussy. Platys are livebearers and prefer water to be harder anyway. Neon tetras have been farm bred for so long that their genetics aren't so great any more so they're a bit less hardy but the flip side is farm bred fish become accustomed to different conditions than wild caught fish so you don't necessarily need to replicate the natural conditions for them. Pikestaff is right, you should aim for stability first of all, and learn the nitrogen cycle so that you can be prepared to keep your fish alive in the longer term. 8.5 isn't that bad anyway pH wise, eg my local tap water comes out 10 or higher. What is interesting about pH is how it relates to another property of the water, carbonate hardness - this just refers to the amount of dissolved carbonate solids in the water. The higher this is, the more alkaline the water is. General hardness (other mineral salts) is important too, especially for livebearers as they need these chemicals to grow and be healthy, but these chemicals do not affect pH. Something else that affects pH is dissolved gasses so you might find if you leave your tap water sitting in a bucket for a week the pH will have dropped in that time as the dissolved gas balance changes. You want a bit of carbonate hardness as it helps your water to resist sudden changes in pH which can do real damage to your fish's health. Your biological filtration (part of the nitrogen cycle) doesn't work too well at pH lower than 6.5 if I recall correctly and aquarium water's pH does tend to drop over time. Driftwood and catappa (Indian almond) leaves can add a little bit towards lowering the pH too but can stain the water brown which may or may not be a look that you like. You should probably decide if you want driftwood in your tank before you get any fish so you can get it soaking and sunk and the water chemistry of the tank won't be changed by adding it later. Generally speaking it's safe to assume your tap water will be pretty close to fine, most of the time, for keeping popular fish. Water that's too hard or too soft tastes weird, water that's too hard doesn't let soap work properly, etc. however it is still worth getting to know the particulars of your local water. I know some people have well water or bore water which might have really high mineral content or existing nitrates or phosphates which can cause algae and affect their ability to breed fish. The pipes in your building might leech copper into the water which can be poisonous to some aquatic life. My own town water comes over 500km by pipeline so is treated very heavily with both chlorine and chloramines, and the dosing changes seasonally. The winter total dissolved solids (TDS) read at 140ppm and summer time it's 180ppm. I have nearly lost fish due to following the dosage levels on the dechlorinator bottle and it wasn't enough to get all the chlorine out. I ended up putting in 4x the dose before it was safe. Your water might be fine, but you won't know until you try it, or if you're worried you can get cheap pH and TDS meters to keep an eye on the water before you use it. A lot of people add new water and dechlorinator straight to the tank when they do a water change but I don't trust that tap water will be the same every time so I would recommend mixing it outside the tank and measuring it to make sure the parameters are within expected values before use. You'll work out with experience which fish and which plants thrive in the conditions you are able to provide. Don't be afraid of failure! Sometimes fish and plants will die even when you do everything right. I don't seem to be able to keep tetras although my penguin tetras are doing okay. Guppies, barbs and danios do fine, catfish seem to struggle a bit and are a bit prone to illness although I have had them breed once (unknown if any fry survived). Neocaridina shrimp didn't do very well, paratya shrimp are happy and breeding. Ramshorn snails go berserk, Malaysian trumps snails struggle to grow and maintain shells. I have some peacock gudgeons which are breeding constantly! I think that's more down to diet than water conditions though. I haven't posted many updates on the gudgeon breeding since the fry are all fine, healthy and growing and I have 4 batches growing concurrently now. There are 3-5 fry in the parent tank that are surviving still, and my small female hasn't had much luck spawning. I got a beautiful batch of eggs out of her earlier today but as she is not the favoured partner the male let his guard down and the other female sneaked into the cave and ate all the eggs. I can't win! Last time I took the eggs out and lost most of them to fungus and the time before that the male ate the eggs. I thought it was because he was an inexperienced dad but it turns out he just doesn't like the small female very much. I wonder if he even bothered fertilising the eggs. I'd like to get a second male so I don't have to juggle caves around every time she fills with eggs. I don't know if they'll breed like this all year or if it's just the season!
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Jan 4, 2017 21:15
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So I've been doing headcounts and I've had a black molly and a panda molly just up and disappear. I even moved decorations around to look for corpses and there's nothing. Zero trace of them. Nothing on the floor or the table the tank sits on either.
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Jan 5, 2017 09:47
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Tony Doughnuts posted:So I've been doing headcounts and I've had a black molly and a panda molly just up and disappear. I even moved decorations around to look for corpses and there's nothing. Zero trace of them. Nothing on the floor or the table the tank sits on either. They are part of the food chain now
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Jan 5, 2017 13:51
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really stuck up there posted:They are part of the food chain now I have danios, assassin snails, and 2 clown loaches. You'd think I'd at least find a skeleton.
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Jan 6, 2017 00:37
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I had snails, shrimp and endlers livebearers reduce an oto to nothing in just over 12 hours. Circle of life.
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Jan 6, 2017 01:48
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They have become one with the Great Cycle of Life
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Jan 6, 2017 23:32
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Praise be
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Jan 7, 2017 05:15
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Oh poo poo nearly had a disaster! Ever since I took all the other fish out of the catfish tank and moved the otos in with the corys, that tank hasn't been quite right. I'm not sure if it's the new driftwood, the lack of guppies to clean up excess food (although there are a lot of shrimp and snail in there), or if its the extra food in the water from the cucumber/repashy for the otos. The balance isn't right any more and it hasn't settled down, the water has been cloudy on and off. I planted some kind of ambulia/cabomba/myriophyllum not sure what plant but it started doing extremely well in that tank despite the fine silica soil. It doesn't grow well in any of my other tanks and maybe that should have been my clue. The corys have been a bit listless, their slime coats started looking a bit grey - not super obvious but looking up close I could see something wasn't right. And some of them started flicking on the sand. The shrimp have all been fine though as far as I can see. I thought maybe the new plant was blocking the flow around the tank and letting wastes accumulate so I cut a heap of it back but that didn't really help and I couldn't see any dirty patches on the substrate after the plant was gone anyway. So it turns out that tank was having a slow and steady pH crash - the one plant loved it, all the fish hated it. Even though I did a water change on Monday with remineralised, rehardened water, the pH was around 5.5 when I measured it just now. I don't want to correct this too fast and shock the fish in the other direction so I'm doing their usual water change but putting it in fairly slowly and allowing it to mix. Not sure if this will be enough but no idea what else to do. This is the tank I have been keeping softest/most acidic out of all my tanks (aiming for around 100-120ppm and pH7 overall), and it's the only tank that doesn't have carbonate playsand somewhere in the substrate. So maybe I've been stuffing up my alkaline dosing in all my tanks but this is the only one with no additional buffering protection? I really don't know. At least I caught it before anything died but some of the cories look really run down. I'd been thinking about moving some of my gudgeon fry to their own tank to give them a little more room to grow out and this has pretty much scared me off - if I can't stop a pH crash from happening in a 100 litre/20g tank what chance does a 20litre/5g have of maintaining stability?
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Jan 7, 2017 08:24
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Alright, novice question here. Picked up some neon tetras yesterday and today found two of them dead, stuck to the filter. I'm afraid the filter is too strong for them to cope with if they get near to it, but I also don't know if maybe they died of other causes and the filter pulled them in. Is there any way to mitigate this? Here's the filter in question.
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Jan 7, 2017 16:36
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You can get a small prefilter sponge or cloth that wraps around the filter intake that will prevent that from happening. Check your local fish store and just ask them for a prefilter sponge.
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Jan 7, 2017 17:55
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Always sponge your filter inlets! Not only does it make them safer, it increases your filtration capacity and helps shrimp proof your tank if you ever decide to keep shrimp. I've lost a few small healthy fish to both internal and hang on back filters before I started using sponges, it's not necessarily that the suction is too strong, it's also that the fish doesn't know that swimming between the bars is a really bad idea. Chances are that your new fish died and got sucked up though; when buying new livestock it's not unusual for fish to keel over, even if you've given them perfect conditions to live in. They would have been shipped to the store from wherever, which is pretty stressful, then kept at the store in a sales tank which is pretty stressful, then brought home in a bag which is pretty stressful and that's plenty to push a fish over the edge. Fish are covered in germs and disease and stress makes them get sick. An unstressed fish can keep itself healthy pretty well as long as it's getting nutritional food and clean water but sometimes the damage has already been done by the time you buy the fish. I typically expect new fish to drop dead for no obvious reason for 4-6 weeks after purchase, the ones that last longer than that usually will stay healthy. I'm guessing you only have one tank so you don't have means to quarantine your fish, so just keep an eye on them for things like white spot, poor coloration, lack of appetite, and if you see a fish that hides at the back away from the others you can usually expect that one to show up dead within a couple of days. So during this period count your fish at least every day so that if one goes missing you can find it and remove it before it goes too rotten and fouls up your water. You might want to do water changes after finding a dead fish too, depending on how rotten it looks. Edited to add: my corys look a lot livelier already so I hope I caught the pH in time before too much damage was done.
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Jan 7, 2017 18:13
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