New guy with major problems!!!

[Freakazoid!]

Hello everybody!

I hate to just show up, introduce myself (Don), and ask for a ton of help, but even though I am a relatively experienced fishkeeper, I am completely baffled.

I have a 150g tank that I had in use for a few years, moved north, and let it sit for a year and a half. I brought it back to life two months ago, without any troubles until 3 weeks ago.

When I restarted it, I cleaned everything with aquarium safe cleaner and brand new razor blades (to scrape scum and such off). I cleaned (somewhat) all my old gravel, thinking that it would help start the cycle. I let it sit with all the filtration running (2x Penguin 330, two powerheads, all taking suction off of an undergravel filter). Sure enough, I got an ammonia buildup, then nitrites, then nitrates.

I did a water change, and then added some fish: 6 of each: Neon tetras, black neons, glowlights, and blackskirts. All was fine. And then...

A friend had to get rid of some gourami. 3x blue, 2x sunset. I had added about 20 neon tetras. All was still fine. Then I started finding dead neons.

I had gourami before, and they left the neons alone, but this group was pretty nippy. I kept losing about a neon a day. After losing around 15 neons, I took the gourami to a local store and "traded" them for some more neons. I also restocked my neons, and my wife brought home a dozen more. The look was great, big giant school, etc.

Long story short - I am now down to 8 neons, over 35 have died. I have gotten rid of the blackskirts (since they started getting nippy after the gourami left), but the neons, and now the glowlights are literally dying right in front of me. I thought that it was neon tetra disease, but it is happening too fast (<24 hours) What is going on? I do regular water changes (33% every two weeks). My water is well water, and it usually tests at 8.2 pH (7.0 out of the tap), 13 dKH, 16 dGH, 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrites, and 5-20 ppm Nitrates. I have 5 amazon swords recently planted (trying to soften the water and lower pH a bit), and I stock the Penguins with Fluval peat granules, both without much effect.

I routinely read many different forums, and I think I am doing all the right things, yet all I have is a big tank of death. Can somebody please help me?

 

[FreshwaterJeff]

Well, I'm pretty much stumped. The only thing I can think of is that your pH is a little on the high side, but I think that's probably ok.

Did all your neons come from the same LFS?

 

[Freakazoid!]

Nope - I have been intentionally buying fish from 4 different stores. I have to admit, I am not a quarantine guy. I just let the bag-o-fish sit in the tank for about 30 minutes, slowly add tank water to the bag, and let them loose after about an hour or so.

 

[Etheostoma]

Mmm...

Sounds like you're doing everything right. Tough call for me.

#1) Nuclear option, sterilize and re-start presuming H2O, filter, & substrate "legacy" contamination.

#2) Broad-spec medicate, pray.

You mention the fish dying in <24h. Is that from introduction to the tank, or after symptoms appear? If symptoms, what are they? Checked the temp, how's the climate control? Had health dept check metals/bacteria on water? Planted tank, so, have you checked dissolved oxygen in early A.M. after light has been off? pH seems high for ground water out of the tap, do you aerate prior to water change? Use any aerosol sprays that may have drifted since the tank was set? I can't extrapolate or infer total or bicarbonate hardness from the kh/gh numbers.

Just questions I'd ask myself, personally. Hope this turns out well.

 

[YahooFishKeeper]

do you mean you have well water, and tap water? like you can choose? if thats what you mean i would use tap since the ph is lower. the ph shouldnt be too bad though, i had neons and mine is 8.4.

 

[FroggyFox]

Are you saying that you've only lost neons and the rest of the fish have been fine? Honestly its not really a surprise to me to see new fish and replacement fish dying...especially not neons. They're notoriously weak and susceptible to everything. Why dont you stop buying new fish, let the ones you have settle down for a few weeks so you take stress out of the equation, as well as anything new that you may have introduced to the tank from pet stores. If you're buying fish from four different stores that means you have 4x the possibility of introducing something nasty into your tank...

After a couple of weeks go by that you haven't had deaths, then try a new batch...maybe cardinals this time. Mix some of your water into the bag every 5 minutes, but dont let any of the pet store water get into your tank...pour the fish into a net over a bucket before letting them loose into the tank. If the bag gets too full dump some water into a bucket or down the sink. You really dont need to float them for an hour unless you're doing something via a drip method because the pH is that different between your house and the pet store....

Welcome to mft Keep us posted on how things are going...

Edit: I just re-read your post...how much is your pH, hardness etc fluxuating because of the addition of plants and whatever else you're doing? That could definitely add to fish stress if its fluxuating too rapidly for some reason. How often do you do water changes?

 

[Nightswimmer]

Hey Freaky!
Neons are sensative to chlorine, ammo, and PH changes, could be the reason you lost so many. Neons can be compared to water as canaries are for miners. It sounds like you may have tried too many tasks at one time. I had a loss with neons like yours. Started with eight, now have two heathly eagar eater neon along with cherry barbs. Just test, making sure the ammo, chlor, and nitrtrites at o, nitrates below .20. Lightly feed and they will be puppys when they see you. It's the greatest when teeny fish know you!

 

[Freakazoid!]

Starting from the top, and working my way down:

Etheostoma: Symptoms include the heavy gasping, loss of color, and ultimately the near white dead fish. Temp is maintained pretty solidly around 79-80F. I haven't checked for bacteria or metals in the water, and I do not aerate the water after pulling it from the tap, although I thought about doing a today/yesterday comparison (for pH mostly).

yahoofishkeeper: Well water, I guess I phrased badly when I said I got it from the tap. I was just trying to point out how different the water is between the tank and what I put it the tank. Water changes have almost no effect on anything other than nitrates.

FroggyFox: Mostly neons, some glowlights and a couple of black neons. I have restocked two weeks apart every time, and on the off weeks I do the water changes. The tank is extremely resistant to any chemistry changes. I was able to manipulate it fairly easily last time I had it set up - I just had to go slow and be patient with trying to adjust 150 gallons. This time it seems I can't do anything to it. I ultimately want to put cardinals in the tank, but until I can sustain neons, I don't want to put in fish that are twice as expensive.

Nightswimmer: I was thinking about the chlorine possiblility. I do live on farm land and lots of fertilizing goes on around here - not that I can verify there is chlorine anywhere, just that I don't know exactly what's going into the ground other than rain. I do like the comparison to canaries - I think I will definitely stay out of the tank of death LOL!

 

[EinNaws]

"I think I will definitely stay out of the tank of death LOL!"

lolollololololololololololol*celebrate

 

[Nightswimmer]

LOL ,...If i was a neon I wouldn't step a fin in your tank. Too bad they don't have a choice. You stated you're own problem in the the first 3 or 4 paragraghs. "150g, cleaning all gravel, basically starting all over."

Research... and I'm not f"ertilizing."

 

[Etheostoma]

Freak,

Sounds like a classic stress response in neons. I'm going to bet they won't take food either, when the symptoms show up.

I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut that the pH difference between the LFS water and your tank water is around 2.0

 

[Freakazoid!]

I had thought about the difference in pH between my tank and the stores, but everything is about 8.0 - 8.2. Most of the research that I have come up with leads me to lowering the pH and see if the fish respond well to that - but as was mentioned before by Nightswimmer, I may be changing too much in a short period of time. My goal is to model the Amazon Basin, which means the pH will come down eventually and have even more plants, but here's what I am considering for the near future:

CO2 injection (to control pH) and more plants (to eventually soften the water)
Additional driftwood - decoration and contribution to soft water.
More filtration with less current - still trying to figure that one out, but it's apparently more like the real thing.

Any other ideas?

P.S. 7 neons and counting....down

 

[Etheostoma]

Nada, sorry.

 

[noncentric]

CO2 injection (to control pH) and more plants (to eventually soften the water)
Additional driftwood - decoration and contribution to soft water.
More filtration with less current - still trying to figure that one out, but it's apparently more like the real thing.

Hi Freak - my guess would be a pH issue. I think that neons are one of those fish that usually do better in 6.5-ish pH and they're weak, so maybe they're too weak to adapt to your higher pH levels.

The CO2, filtration, and current adjustments that you're planning may cause fluctuations that future neons can't handle either, so it might be better to wait until you have those other items set-up before getting more neons. You could always throw in some white cloud mountain minnows to keep the tank interesting in the meantime - they're very hardy and likely won't die-off as rapidly.

Also, if you add CO2 injection and get the pH stabilized - but then later you decrease current and surface agitation, then you'll need to 're-stabilize' your pH. What I mean is, less CO2 will 'gas-off' when you decrease surface agitation, which will decrease your pH...so it'll probably be best to start the CO2 injection and filtration/current adjustments at the same time.

Good luck!

 

[phishy]

IMO is this the first time you are running your tank with well water? I had a similar exprience going from city water and well water. The well water was a total disaster for my tank so I stored my tank until I moved where I did not have well water. The thing about well water your PH is high for the type of fish you are keeping. You really need to test your well water first, try putting the water in a container let it sit for 24 hours and then test the water parameters. The next thing is wherever you are purchasing your fish find out if the LFS using city water or well water that could be the difference you are dealing with. The next thing is check the water parameters that the fish are bagged in. IMO tetras prefer soft acidic water even though you can acclimate them to higher ph/harder water. The PH should really be under 7.0 and temp 80 F. In the wild tetras come from the same areas as discus low PH and high temp. I have kept discus in the past with tetras and cory cats and live plants in my tank. Hope this help another suggestion you might have to have a separate container and get the water parameters to mirror the water in your tank once you have stabilize the water to where you want since you are using well water otherwise you will keep losing fish on a regular basis.

 

[davidmold]

At a temperature of 79-80 and a pH as high as 8.4, even undetectable (by a regular test kit) amounts of ammonia (less than 0.1ppm) would be lethal to neon tetras. Every time you add a few fish, you get a tiny spike in ammonia, more neons die. My advice would be to stop adding neons until you find a way to get the pH down. Neons also prefer cooler temperatures, about 74 would suit them better.

 

[Freakazoid!]

Thanks for the help everybody. So many responses in so little time! *thumbsup2

I started looking in some different directions, and I used a phosphate test kit that I bought the other day - it tested way off the color chart. I also found a handy ratio of nitrates to phosphates that said it should be around 10:1, which means that I have way more phosphates than I should (nitrates were at 10 ppm this morning). What I haven't found is if this is harmful to the fish or not. I did find that it is a big contributor to algae, which I don't have too much of a problem with. Anybody know that one?

In the meantime, I think I will have to start buying some good water for water changes until I can get my own setup going.

 

[FroggyFox]

well...aside from changing the plan for the tank to cichlids (which I'm sure many folks here will tell you that a 150 would be an AWESOME CICHLID TANK heh and your water chemistry is right on!) it sounds like you're going to need to do a lot of manipulation of water chemistry to get it where you want it to be, and stable. Any water change water is going to have to be manipulated before getting added to the tank because you can't just add 8.0+ to <6.0 pH and expect all of your fish to be 'ok' with that fluxuation...you might think about finding an RO unit and using that...I imagine buying water at 35% of a 150 gallon tank a week could be rather daunting.

Your research with the phosphates and what you're going to need to figure out with c02 injection etc really is in line with a planted tank...so you may want to spend some time picking some of our members brains in the planted forum (or PM Avalon ) I dont know that phosphates aren't harmful to fish...but I dont think they are. The biggest thing with them is as you said, they're a major contributor to algae issues.

Good Luck...keep us posted on how its going!

 

[tank_angel]

if its possible get another tank or find a way to place all the fish currently in ur tank out of ur 150gallon and go to ur local petstore and buy aquarium salt u might have paracites of some form, try taring down ru tannk and cleanign it with the salt from the pet store and then add some water comditioner.. if you still are having them die on u 1 its the current fish set up u have they may jsut be stressed because of the larger speicies of fish in the tanks.. smlaler fish get stress reallly easy

 

[Freakazoid!]

Well I am still at 7 neons. I did a 10% water change with some Culligan water from the bottle filling machine at Wal Mart (It says it is RO water). All water parameters are fairly constant right now: pH 8.2, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10. Phosphates still of the scale, and I still can't figure out if they are bad for fish. Other than that, I have no idea what the problem is/was. I figure I will do several water changes as before, probably every couple of days. I think I will also look into an RO unit - those 5 gallon bottles kill my back!