RAM Genocide

[RobD]

Had 5 rams, one of them a nice female that was one of my first two rams.

3 of them passed on two days ago simultaneously. Discovered my nitrates were jacked up to 160ppm. Emergency 50% water change, extensive gravel vac.

One more expired today, leaving me with 1. Second 50% water change and a filter cleaning has my nitrates back to 20ppm.

May they all enjoy their new resting place together. I'm sure they are still having spats over who gets ghost shrimp treat (Brine shrimp in the real world, ghost shrimp in the after-life, right???)

I'm sorry to the 4 that I didn't catch the nitrates sooner.

 

[NoDeltaH2O]

160ppm !!!!!!

WTF! Wow, that's off the chart. Did you have any fish seem totally unaffected by the nitrate level? I have heard that rams are susceptible to poor water quality, and this is proof positive all those reports are true.

EDIT: HEY, what happened to the

 

[RobD]

Yeah, I was saying WTF! out loud! I came home for lunch, found 3 dead rams. I knew SOMETHING was wrong. I was a few days late of doing my weekly water change, but come on - two days? I checked the numbers that night, and Amonia and Nitrite were 0 - as they should be, and ph was stable at 7.4 (my normal). Then the nitrate started getting redder, and redder, and redder.

All I can figure is it has been 6 months since I opened my canister to change a filter pad. Flow was still near 100% according to the Eheim indicator, and I had no reason to suspect it. But I think maybe it became a Nitrate factory, so I cleaned it out last night after the 4th ram died. I thought maybe a bunch of snails died in my filter, but it would take a lot of them to get the Nitrate that high, so I ruled that out.

The only thing I noticed was that 2 of my 5 cories were breating a little faster than normal. I lost 1 neon a week ago, but they are almost 8 months old now, I expect to lose 1 of those every month or so from now on.

Lesson? Check those numbers EVERY week! An established tank of almost a year can still throw you a wild pitch.