Recent content by Rockatteer

Yeah I did. I know your not suppose to clean out everything because of cycling issues etc, but must of my stock is dead (got 5 fish left) so I didn't have much to lose. And as it turned out the risk seems to have been worth it. The tanks clean, and the fish seem to be swimming around happily...

Yeah it was quite faint from the tank itself. I couldn't really identify the smell, but once I pulled the filter apart it was right your face, and I could tell right away what the smell was. But yes it's all cleaned out and seems happy for now. :)

OK, well I decided to take the extreme approach and gave the tank a good clean out. Removed everything out of the tank, washed it all out. Gravel was filthy, filter stunk of rotten eggs, which would have been what the smell was I could smell, but it wasn't until I took the filter pads out that...

How would I know how they died? Yeah the PH drops and stays low, it's only coming back up because I'm putting baking soda in. The tanks about 3 years old, only additives used are the water conditioner at water change. Water is changed weekly, although I've been doing daily changes for the past...

It smells like matches, which I was thinking is more phosphor? It's not the normal rotten eggs smell of sulfur. Here's a picture of the tank so you can see what's in it etc.

Water comes from the tap which has a normal PH range of 7.2 or higher. I checked it yesterday and it was 7.4. Only thing I've changed recently is the water conditioner I use, but that was done after this started happening. I just noticed the tank water has a strange smell to it. Almost like a...

Any got any ideas on why my PH would drop from 7 down to 6.2 (or even 6) every night? It's started doing it over the last 2-3 weeks. I bring the levels back up with Baking soda, but then it drops again over night. The huge ph swings have killed off most of my fish. Any ideas?

hmm...I do a 25% - 33% water change every week. Guess I'll need to up it to 2 per week for a while huh?

I brought a 5 in one test kit which showed Nitrates to be off the scale, so I assumed my bio cycle has been wiped out and have done a 50% water change with a double dose of Aqua Plus and Cycle. I also purchased a bottle of Flurish Excel to deal with the black beard Algae.

No, I was testing the fish water. :)

Yeah I've always done water treatment before it goes into the tank and I have a separate bucket which has only ever been used for water changes. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what could have caused the fish damage other than water condition. I'm starting to wonder about my tap water actually...

Thanks for that information Colin. Very much appreciated. I always use water conditioners when changing the water. Over the last couple of months I've been using a product called "Safe Start" which claims to also neutralize heavy metals and provide a slim coat and electrolytes for the fish. But...

The tank is a 60 litre tank. has 10 fish in it... 5 Tetras, 3 sunsets 1 Zebra Danio and 1 Plecostomus PH is 7.0, although it has been sitting around 6.7 for a little the last few weeks, but I've brought it back up to 7 again now. Can't test for anything else in the water because I only have a...

Yeah ON the fish. I've attached some not so good pictures so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about. You can't see the black stuff as well int he photos as you can in real life.. its quite prominent and has only recently appeared on the fish. This fish seems the worst, one other sunset...