Unhappy rainbows, help please!

Addy

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Tank size: 105 litres
pH: 7.5
ammonia: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 0
kH: 2
gH: 4
tank temp: 24*C
Filter: Aquael ASAP 700

Tank inhabitants:
5 zebra danios
1 dwarf neon rainbow (down from 6)
2 honey gouramis
3 bronze cories
3 peppered cories
1 nerite snail

Hi, hoping for some advice! My aquarium details are above. It's been set up since the end of June, and was fully cycled before any of the fish (except two danios that had to be rehoused quickly) were added. It's planted with various crypts, a couple of anubias, dwarf sag and various other plants that I can't recall the name of! With sand substrate and a piece of driftwood.

All the fish have seemed pretty happy in there except for the big issue that one by one I've been losing them! In the last couple of months I've lost a honey gourami and 5 out of 6 rainbow fish. The gourami I think was just bad luck (the two remaining seem really healthy) but there's clearly something majorly wrong for the rainbows. The lone survivor is currently swimming around with his nose up at the surface, which is what the others did before they died. There has also been an outbreak of algae in the last month or so, which again I'm taking as a sign that something isn't right... (I've had a 25l nano tank for 3 years that I've never had a problem with, I thought a larger tank would be easier!)

I've been carrying out smaller water changes every other day (was doing them once a week) thinking that there was an ammonia or nitrite problem, but I finally bought a liquid test kit yesterday and found the above results. (Twice tested just in case!) I think there's a problem with the kh but I don't know what to do about this, I don't want to add much and end up causing big problems elsewhere! Is the kh the problem, and what should I do about it?!

Sorry for the essay but wanted to give as much info as possible.
 
Hi and welcome to the forum :)

If you can post pictures and a short 20 second video of the fish acting odd it will be easier to work out what is going on.

Rainbowfish are sensitive to chemicals and if you overdose with anything you kill them. This includes chlorine/ chloramine and other chemicals in tap water, which will kill them pretty quickly if they are exposed to it.

If the fish are kept in soft water (GH less than 200ppm) they are more likely to suffer from poisoning. I'm not sure where you live but in Perth, Western Australia the tap water is similar to yours but I need to buffer the water with a Rift Lake water conditioner to increase the hardness, and aerate and filter the water for a week before using it otherwise I lose fish.

You have to make sure the water is dechlorinated completely before the water is added to the tank.

If the fish have not been exposed to chemicals, medications or plant fertilisers or chlorine/ chloramine, they could have Tuberculosis (TB). This causes the fish to stop feeding, swell up (get fat), do stringy white poop, breath heavily by the surface or filter outlet, and die within 24-48hours after first showing these symptoms. There's no cure for TB.
 
Thanks for replying. They definitely don't have TB with those symptoms. I use prime to treat the water - I add enough to treat the whole tank (so 2.5ml for the 100 litres) to the first fresh bucket into the tank. This is what I was advised when I started using prime with the new tank. I do the same with my nano tank (shrimp and chili rasbora) and they are fine...

I'm in the UK. Any recommendations on what I need to do about the kh?

I'll post a pic of the rainbow when I get a chance...
 
You should only add water conditioner/ dechlorinator to the new water that goes into the tank, and it should be added to each bucket of water before the water is added to the tank.
eg: your bucket holds 10 litres of water so you put in enough dechlorinator to treat that 10 litres. Stir it up and let it aerate for a little while (30 minutes if you can but at least 2 minutes of vigorous aeration), then pour that bucket of water into the tank. Fill up another bucket of water and treat that for chlorine/ chloramine, aerate then add to the tank.
If you have a couple of buckets you can have one aerating while you fill the other.

-----------------------
GH is more important than KH and KH will usually go up when you increase the GH.

To raise the GH you can add a Rift Lake conditioner at a lower dose (1/5th normal dose) and it will raise the GH by about 80ppm and the KH will increase too. You would have to add the Rift Lake conditioner to the new water whenever you do a water change.
eg: you change 40 litres so you treat 40 litres with the Rift Lake conditioner.
 

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