Changed to new tank major problems

FishForums.net Pet of the Month
🐶 POTM Poll is Open! 🦎 Click here to Vote! 🐰

jeex87

New Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2017
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
Hi All,

I wasn't sure where else to turn to and I am out of ideas - I'm hoping for some advice - All my fish I've had for 6+ years are dying.

I recently moved house and had to purchase a new fish tank to fit the space of a wall in the new house. The new tank is not as long but taller - same water volume 300 litres.

Yesterday 6pm I moved the fish from the old house to the new house in a few buckets filled with the old fish tanks water. I also filled a couple of barrels of water equating to 60+ litres of the old tank water (as this tank water was perfect). I have a canister filter which I left full of the water and did not clean or change the media inside.

I transported them to the new tank 15 minutes away. I then filled the new tank and got it ready - which took longer than expected. Probably about an hour. I noticed the fish were starting to gasp for air in the buckets.
Once the tank was ready for fish I placed them in.
They were all floating or swimming upside down. After 15 minutes they appeared all fine. Nothing wrong with them. I put a little food in and they didn't eat which I was not worried about because last time I moved they took a day or two to settle down.

I tested the water for PH, ammonia, nitrate and nitrite.
All appeared well - the PH was a little low so I added some PH up (not a lot, but just a little so I can get it just right).
Then went to bed.

Woke up this morning to dead fish.
I've lost 7 out of 12 of fish in the tank which were all mature fish. 2 silver dollar, 2 clown loaches, ghost knife, silver shark, catfish shark.

The only ones alive were the 3 severums, electric yellow and 1 silver dollar (who looks like will die any moment).

I immediately checked the water for all the usual. The PH was THREW the roof - sitting over 8.8+ (as the test does not go any higher)

There was no nitrate, ammonia or nitrite.
I did not have any PH down so I made a trip to the pet shop and took some of the tank water with me.
They tested it - Said the PH is fine, but there is some ammonia and nitrate. I was confused.

I bought a brand new set of testing equipment for the PH etc and PH down.
Got home - tested the water again - PH still high, which contradicted the shops test...
I did a 25% water change then I added the PH down - retested about an hour later and the PH was back to a good level.

But the fish remaining have not changed at all.
The electric yellow is still at the bottom of the tank upside down.
Silver Dollar laying on its side.
One smaller severum appears fine...swimming around - but slow and bumping in to things in the tank.
The other smaller severum is laying on its side from time to time.
The large (and oldest) severum is trying to keep its self upright but keeps lying down. At the moment it has wedged itself between 2 pieces of wood to keep itself upright.

I added aquarium salt to the tank to possibly help them breath. I added tap water conditioner, stresscoat to the tank...

There seems to be no difference.
It is now 7.16pm the next day - and they have shown no sign of improvement.

I am out of ideas!!! All the tests for PH etc are all fine....
I'm just sitting here watching my fish die :(
 
I would suspect the pH being the culprit. What was the pH in the tank after first being filled? You said you used pH Up because it was low...how low exactly?

As I'm here, I will try to explain what I think happened, subject to your confirmation of the pH. If the tank pH was relatively close to the p\H of the water the fish were in, say within 1 degree (so, example, tank pH 6, bucket fish water 7, but no greater difference), the fish should have dealt with it. The pH Up chemical affects fish as it gets into their bloodstream, so that is stress at the very least. Then it drove the pH up, more stress. And if greater than 1 degree, severe shock. Most fish will not survive something like this. But we need to know exact numbers.

Never, never use pH adjusting chemicals in a tank with fish. A stable pH is safer than fluctuating. Normal pH fluctuations caused by natural means are usually minimal and fish can deal with them, as they occur in nature. There is a lot of water chemistry behind pH, including the GH and KH. This is one major reason why the pH chemicals rarely work long-term; the initial change settles back when the natural buffering kicks in.

Find out the source water (tap water) numbers for all three (GH, KH or Alkalinity, pH). These will tell us what to expect in the aquarium, and whether action may or may not be required.

Also, do you have plants? And substrate, did you move the old or use brand new?

Byron.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your reply.

The PH in the old tank was sitting at 7.0ish.
The PH out of the tap is 6.9ish.

I would agree that PH is the issue as well.
Without adding anything the PH was fluctuating so much from one extreme to the next the previous day. 3 different results from the same water using 3 different tests.

I've been testing it during the day yesterday every hour and it has remained 7.0ish.

Yesterday afternoon I did another 20% water change.

Before going to bed I then reduced the water level by about 20% so that the outflow would create substantial ripples in case it was an oxygen problem.

Woken up this morning to check on the remaining fish - they are all still alive - mostly in the same condition.
The 2 younger severums look alert, one swimming awkwardly around. The others the same. The silver dollar is just a case of when it will die...It looks bad.

I have no live plants and used new substrate as the old tank was fine sand whereas the new tank is rock.
 
Right. I can detail this a bit more now.

A fluctuation in pH of a few decimal points is not a problem for fish, provided it is "normal," meaning as it occurs in nature. The pH in natural waters fluctuates daily, what we term the diurnal fluctuation. Plants increase this in an aquarium. It can be as much as four to six decimal points. "Decimal points" here means the number after the period, so say 7.2 to 7.6 is five decimal points. A single degree would be from 7.2 to 8.2, as an example. The pH scale is logarithmic, meaning that each degree represents a ten-fold increase or decrease. So a pH of 6 is ten times more acidic that a pH of 7, and 100 times more acidic than a pH of 8. So in your situation, when the tank pH went from 6.9 or 7.0 up to 8.8, that was almost a 100-fold increase in alkalinity. Fish cannot tolerate this so rapidly. Most reliable sources, written by biologists, suggest that a change of more than 1 degree should never be implemented with fish in the water, but up to 1 degree, and provided it is not sudden, most fish tend to adjust.

So with the pH at 7.0 in the old water, the fish could be moved into the tank with a pH somewhere in the range of 6.5 to 7.5 without trouble. This would not be more than 0.5 which is not something you want to do, but otherwise healthy fish can manage and will settle in. Avoid any stress, no tank light, no feeding, no messing about inside the tank...total relaxation and dim light in such situations.

Let's hope the fish recover, though this has inevitably caused issues internally but we cannot know or deal with them even if we did know. Provided the pH remains around 7 you should be OK.

The pH Up chemical raised the pH as you were adding it, but it also continues to operate for some time (depending upon various factors), and obviously continued to rise up to 8.8 as you said. Subsequently the KH has beeen acting as a buffer to restore the pH--you didn't provide the GH and KH numbers, but I will assume there is some level of KH (Alkalinity) and this buffers pH to keep it where it is in that water (tap). Water changes will also help to restore the pH. The KH will do the same in the fish tank, though other things can affect it, but I won't get into that.

That's the pH issue, which was likely the problem. Now to the substrate...what exactly does "rock" mean? The substrate in an aquarium is the single most important area, as it hosts a colony of various types of bacteria, much different from the filter. These need a suitable media and sand or fine gravel is ideal. Larger "rock" may not be, depending what this is.

The other substrate issue is your fish...loaches must have sand or a very fine gravel, or they will be stressed. Not knowing what you have, I can't offer more. But you need some sand-like substrate, with chunks of wood, for the loaches.

Byron.
 
Thank you so much for your reply and helpful information. It is a wealth of knowledge and I appreciate it and will reference it for the future.

A series of unfortunate events have played out - Stress during transportation and the issue with the sudden rise in PH would be to blame. I threw out the testing kit I had as I could not trust it anymore. Reason I say this is when I discovered the fish had died in the morning - I retested the water and the PH colour was yellow - meaning a PH of 6.0 or under...I thought what - this can't be...I have a high range PH tester and thought I would try that...there is was dark dark purple meaning 8.8 or more....

The substrate is not large rocks, pebbles - this is it http://www.aquaone.com.au/product-range/decoration/gravel/item/3477-12209

I do have large driftwood in the tanks for the loaches...which I now have none of :( but I do have large hallow drift wood which fish can swim freely in and out of.

I'm currently at work - but will be home in about 2 hours. I will update on the remaining fishes status' then.

Once again thank you so much for your information and knowledge.
I'm really just hoping that at least one will survive.
 
I've gotten home and the silver dollar has not survived.
The 2 smaller severums are swimming slowly around - but the seem to be bottom heavy - each time they try to swim up to the top or mid height of the tank they fall back down, its sort of like they have weights tied to them. Also not eating.

The larger severum is just laying at the bottom of the tank - not looking good.

The electric yellow is still upside down, trying to swim and move but not getting much luck being upside down.

I did fail to mention that I also have a talking catfish - who appears to now be fine and himself, even eating a small amount.

Are the smaller severums still adjusting and in shock do you think?
 
I am indeed sorry about all this, but there is nothing more you could have done. I'm fairly certain the pH was your issue here. Usually we would think ammonia and/or nitrite, but your tests indicate this was not the issue, though I suppose we cannot rule it out completely. Could have been both problems. And once exposed to whichever, fish do not completely recover; the internal damage is done, and while sometimes they live through cycling for example, it has taken a toll nonetheless. The pH shock is what I would still blame this on, given the reaction you described.

Moving on...

Now you have the opportunity to select suitable fish from the beginning (the catfish being already there). Some of the severum may survive, you can only wait and see. I would certainly not get any new fish for a few weeks. This will allow the tank's biology to settle, and the surviving fish, if any, will partly govern what may work going forward. You had some fish, like the loaches, that are really not suited to this small a tank, and without a group of five or six minimum.

Which brings me to the substrate. If you intend substrate fish like cories, loaches, and some others, this is not a good substrate. I know it looks nice--it would make a lovely river scape for Central American livebearers--but it is not at all suitable for substrate fish. You need to decide whether you want to keep it and build the fish around it, or change it out for sand. That is up to you. However, livebearers need moderately hard or harder water; with a pH that seems to normally be below 7, you probably have soft water. That you should determine first; your municipal water authority probably have a website, and water data is usually posted. The GH (general or total hardness) is critical, but it also helps to know the KH (carbonate hardness, also called Alkalinity) as this buffers pH and will give us an idea what to expect there. If the water is soft, then I would change the substrate, as sand will open many more options for fish.
 
Thank Byron.

I've woken up this morning to quite a nice surprise. The fish a looking a lot better. The big green severum is doing a lot better - swimming around much more than before.
An even bigger surprise - I had thought my other silver dollar had already died and my partner took it out of the tank, when in fact this morning it was swimming around completely fine!!! I said to my partner, I thought it was dead. They said it was hiding under the giant driftwood for a few days.
I was gob smacked. It does have what appears to a burn mark on the side of its body - at some point it must have been resting on the heater for a period of time. The silver dollar seems as it always was - swimming around fine and looks good (except for the mark on its side).

It still is not daylight completely here - when the sun does come up I will find the electric yellow as it may have gone under the giant drift wood as did the dollar.

The report from my water provider says the following;
Average

pH 7.3 apparent
hardness 19
alkalinity 12
iron 0.04
 
Sounding better. As to the parameters, do you know the unit of measurement? The GH for example is 19, but this could be mg/l, ppm, degrees, or some other unit.
 
It says;

pH (units); hardness (mg/L as calcium carbonate); alkalinity (mg/L as calcium carbonate); iron (mg/L)
 
It says;

pH (units); hardness (mg/L as calcium carbonate); alkalinity (mg/L as calcium carbonate); iron (mg/L)

That's what we need. So your GH is 19 mg/l. Mg/l is the same as ppm (parts per million) which is commonly used in the hobby, so 19 ppm. Another common unit we use is dH or dGH (degrees), and you can convert back and forth with 17.9, so multiply dGH by 17.9 to get the equivalent ppm, or divide ppm by 17.9 to get the equivalent degrees. With 19 ppm, you have basically 1 dGH. This is very soft water, ideal for soft water species. My tap water is even softer at 7 ppm.

The KH or Alkalinity is 12 mg/l, = 12 ppm, or less than 1 dKH. Same 17.9 multiply/divide applies here too. This is minimal buffering, not a problem (mine is even less at basically zero). What this means is that the pH of the tap water is very likely going to lower once the aquarium is established. The accumulation of organics primarily in the substrate will be broken down by various bacteria, creating CO2. CO2 is used by plants, but it also creates carbonic acid, so the pH naturally lowers. Also not a problem for most soft water species. Regular partial water changes will counter this somewhat, increasing your water stability. Also not overcrowding and not overfeeding.

The fish you had/have are soft water species. When the time comes to consider new fish, stay with soft water species and you're fine.
 

Most reactions

trending

Staff online

Members online

Back
Top