Health of the tank

[EliteGear]

Hey all, hope you are doing well. I will post below what I have and let me know what I need to do. Thanks!

55 gallon tank
two power filters
1 uv filter
1 large sponge filter
sand
two large driftwood
1 amazon sword plant
some hair grass, fish are decimating it as we speak
Fish Include
4 small clown loaches
six neon tetras
2 black tetras
4 Columbia tetras
2 Serpae tetras
2 Rosy barbs
2 Cherry Barbs
1 peacock eel
2 zebra danios
6 cory cats assorted
1 albino bristle nose
2 misc tetras with white fins look like serpae a lot just differnet color
2 black neons
2 guppys
1 blue gourami
2 kissing fish
3 angles
3 tiger barbs


API master test kit reads
PH 7.2
High PH 7.4
Ammonia .25
Nitrite 0
Nitrate red I believe it is 40 to 80 ppm hard to read the chart
I clean it out every Sunday about 3 5 gallon bucket loads each time
tank has been running about three Months

I am guessing I need to do a big water change to get Nitrate down. My Male guppy constantly follows my female. today she was able to swim strong but seemed to not be able to stop her self from floating to top. I gave her some pees an put her in a breeder cup to rest. One of my Rosy barbs the make used to chase the female around. Now he sits in corner an breathes really fast. His color is really good. Might have an injury on top fin but no other signs besides breathing to fast, He is really fat. I feed twice a day. They eat it all in a few minutes.

 

[Newman]

it sounds like you have an overstocked tank, and some of your fish like the clown loaches do not belong in a 55gallon tank. they need much bigger tanks and a good group of 5+.
a lot of the tetras that you have and barbs are not in proper schools of 5+.
I think you should reduce the variety of the fish you have in here, and get proper numbers of the fish you actually want to be in this tank. they should be healthier that way.
I would lose stuff like the eel, kissing gouramies, clown loaches, etc.

 

[FishDad]

The ammonia is far more toxic than you nitrates. It could kill your fish. You need to get that down to 0. When did you add fish?

 

[FreshyFresh]

EG, welcome to the forum! That is an overwhelming stock list you've got there. Whew!! You've got ~40 fish and some of them can get huge. Even the angels can/will get saucer sized. I'd do like newman suggested and reduce the variety, increase the school size.

I've got a 55 as well, and do a weekly water change of ~3, 5gal buckets on it, but I've got less than half that number of fish in it.

Your nitrates are high because the tank has too big a bio-load on it. If what you've got in there is working for you and you want to keep it as-is, just do larger or more frequent water changes on it. You probably need to change out more like 25-30g of water weekly.

 

[Rotaripsnoc]

I'm sure your tank is very active.

Not to beat a dead horse, however you're grossly overstocked.

To put it in perspective, you'd need filtration for a 400 gal tank just to handle the bio load of the tank, that doesn't address the territory or aggression you'll have to deal with as the fish mature.

AqAdvisor - 50

 

[Newman]

i have never seen that many warnings on AqAdvisor before o_o