2 Questions - Please Help!

[sunrise]

1. I have a lot of algae forming on my gravel and leaves. My once-white gravel is gradually turning brownish-green in places. I bought a couple of tiny algae eating fish, but they can't keep up with it. Any other advice about eliminating algae? (I have live plants.)

2. Today I siphoned my tank for the first time and it worked really well -- too well, maybe? Water was gushing out so rapidly I had to stop because the water level was going down by nearly a third. I only managed to clean 2 spots. How can I siphon the whole tank when the water gushes out so quickly? Any advice?

Thanks in advance! (This forum is so helpful.)

 

[Lynda B]

What size tank and what do you have in it?

What are your readings: pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate?

When you say you siphoned for the first time, do you mean this is the very first time you've done a water change in your tank? If so, how long has your tank been set up. If it's been awhile, that could be part of your algae problem.

We use a Python and love it. You can adjust the flow either way, whether you're removing water or filling your tank. What are you using?

 

[sunrise]

What size tank and what do you have in it?

What are your readings: pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate?

When you say you siphoned for the first time, do you mean this is the very first time you've done a water change in your tank? If so, how long has your tank been set up. If it's been awhile, that could be part of your algae problem.

We use a Python and love it. You can adjust the flow either way, whether you're removing water or filling your tank. What are you using?

I've had this 20 gallon aquarium for about a month. My readings are checked regularly by the pet store where I bought everything and they're stable. This is the first time I've siphoned the tank since setting it up.

Is the rapid water gushing while siphoning normal? If I kept "vacuuming" the tank, at the rate it was going, my tank water level would have gotten dangerously low.

ETA: I have 3 black skirt tetras, 3 platys, 3 neon tetras, 1 tiny algae eating fish (down from 3), and a clown loach. My fish all seem very active and healthy.

For siphoning, I'm using a standard siphon (large plastic tube with small flexible tube attached -- recommended by the pet store.)

 

[Lynda B]

First things first..... please buy yourself a drop test kit, not the strip kind. You need to be responsible at home for the welfare of your fish. While the tank is cycling, you should be doing readings quite often to check your pH, ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. What exactly does "stable" mean? What is the store checking for?

You have a lot of fish for a tank that's not cycled. Did you add them in all at once when you initially set up the tank? I see that you've lost some. It was most likely due to the stress involved in the skyrocketing bioload you had going in your tank when you did not have the beneficial bacteria set up to handle such a bioload. Since you also had not cleaned the tank at all in the first month, you could've lost some fish to ammonia poisoning.

Look at it this way.... what you asked of your fish, by keeping them in a dirty tank for a month would be the equivalent of you sitting in a closet with all of your food waste and bodily waste for a month. Not a very pleasant thought.

Our first responsibility is the welfare of our fish. We care for them with the proper nutrition and surroundings. We set up our tanks to provide them what they require and to please whatever species we choose to have. And then.... and only then.... do we worry about them meeting our needs.

Please read up on the nitrogen cycling of a tank and you'll gather a greater understanding of what your fish are experiencing and what you can do to help them survive. Knowledge is free.... there are great magazines out there and places like this forum, where people new to the hobby can get so much great information. We can avoid making the mistakes people before us did just because they choose to share their experiences.

Personally, I'm not feeling really good about everything your store is recommending. It might be time to get a second opinion, i.e., a second, fish-minded, store. Sounds like your store is making a profit off of you, at the expense of your fish.

 

[rdd1952]

Besides what has already been asked, how long do you have your lights on each day and does the take ever get direct sunlight? How often and how much do you feed? Too much light, overfeeding and high nitrates (caused by lack of water changes and overfeeding) are all major causes of algae.

You should be able to vacuum the gravel/sand easily in the time it takes to remove 15 to 25 percent of the water if you do weekly water changes. If you only do them once a month, there will be so much waste that it takes too long to get it out, thus removing too much water.

I will second the thought that you need to get your own liquid test it for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH. The LFS will tell you that he levels are ok but that's not very reliable. If your fish die, they get to sell you more. If you do depend on the LFS to test your water, make them tell you the exact readings, not just that they are ok. Any reading for ammonia or nitrite other than 0 is unacceptable and can kill your fish.

 

[ArauraDiscus]

I prefer python filters to regular siphons. No blowing or sucking on the tube required as well as no buckets. You simply hook it up to your faucet and turn the faucet on. With a simple twist of a green adapter, you can blow the water or suck it through the python gravel vac, and with a simple twist of a switch, you can adjust the flow from superspeed suction to barely sucking. It's a great tool I reccomend you get it, you'll be thankfull.

also

===========
"The LFS will tell you that he levels are ok but that's not very reliable. If your fish die, they get to sell you more."
=====

That I don't find fair, I work at a local fish store and unless someones a hard head, I will not let them take a single fish home when they have ammonai or Nitrite, also I let them look at the test results. I do whats best for the fish and the customer, not for my store. Maybe I'm one of the few, but the majority of people you see at a LFS are teenagers, who don't get commission for selling pets, and could care less if their company gets tons of money, as long as they get paid by the hour, so you won't find too many people decieving you just to sell a fish or two. But yes I reccomend that you get your own kit.

 

[rdd1952]

I have a python but only use it to refill my tanks as it just wastes too much water when removing water as the tap has to be running wide open.

 

[ArauraDiscus]

Yeah it does waste a lot of water, but I live in an area that has enough water. And since water is replenishable I don't find that as big of a deal as paper and recycling.

 

[rdd1952]

My water bill is already high enough without using any more than I have to.

 

[Lynda B]

We should also say that there are two types of local fish stores.

There are your hole-in-the-wall stores, that you wouldn't even know were there, and that have the most unbelievably knowledgeable staff, hardy and healthy fish and every type of food, equipment and book you could ever want. These are the places where you always see at least a couple of employees changing water and generally cleaning tanks and they usually have wet floors and unkempt shelves. This is because all of their time goes into fish keeping.

Then, and I know there are exceptions, there are your PetsMart's and Petco's where the teenager who wants to earn money for his first car, and with absolutely no experience with fish, gets hired on and hey, there's an opening in the fish department, so that's where he hangs his hat. I'm sure he tries his best, but with no experience or knowledge, he sometimes wings it. And you end up believing what he tells you because he is, after all, the pet store guy. We're lucky here. We have a good Petco within an hour driver, but our PetsMart absolutely stinks.

I'll stick with the hole-in-the-wall guys any day of the week. They have never steered us wrong.

 

[sunrise]

First of all, I didn't add all the fish at once. I added them gradually, over weeks, always getting the water tested beforehand to ensure balanced conditions. Most of them in there have been around since the day they were added, including the very first ones.

I feed them twice a day, and only as much as they're all able to finish, and the lights stay on for about 12 hours at a time. The tank does not get direct sunlight.

People are telling me I'm doing so many things wrong now -- I keep getting so much conflicting advice from this forum and the petstore. There are no tropical fish specialty stores that I know of in my area so I'm sorry that I can't get more informed advice. Before I got my fish, I didn't know you couldn't trust PetSmart. I find that very unfortunate, and if I had known that I probably would never have started up an aquarium. I hate to think that I'm mistreating my fish -- that makes me feel awful.

At the same time, I feel really helpless because I'm so new at this.


***Another Question: Last night, I replenished the volume of water that got siphoned out with treated fresh water. The water level still isn't as high as I'd like it to be, but I didn't want to add too much at once. I really want to do more cleaning today, but I'm worried that if I remove more water again and then replace it with fresh, the chemical balance in my tank will be severely thrown off. You're only meant to replace about, what, 15% of water at a time? When should I even attempt to siphon it again?

 

[Lynda B]

Don't feel badly that you're stumbling a bit. All of us have.... and some of us still do. It comes with the territory.

You're doing many things right, like not having your tank in direct sun. Your 12 hour lighting is good. You added the fish gradually.

I do weekly water changes, anywhere between 25 and 50%. It depends on how the fish are doing, what my readings are, what I've been feeding them, etc. Also, if I do a decor change, it's a 50% change.

 

[gilaesther]

I do a 50% water change, and the fish don't seem to mind. And don't worry about adding too much water at once, you're forgetting that regardless of how much water you add, the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates in the water will be at the same level. Better that the fish should have more fresh water in which to swim, than less.

 

[Aphotic Phoenix]

While my moms tank was cycling I was changing 20-30% of the water twice a day! As long as you matching your tanks temperature as close as possible, and you are using a conditioner to remove chlorine and chlorimides (sp?) you won't mess up the chemistry of your tank.

The only time there is a risk for this is when the pH of your tank has dropped dangerously low due to a huge build up of waste, and therefore your tap water is a much higher pH. If that is the case, a series of small daily water changes would be best to help slowly raise the pH and not shock the fish.

 

[rdd1952]

There's no problem with changing the water. As long as your pH isn't dropping or rising a substantial amount between water changes, you can change as much as you want. As for the conflicting advice, as Lynda B already mentioned, a lot of the employees at the chain stores have very little knowledge af how to properly maintain a tank. That's not to say that there aren't good, knowledgable employees in the chain stores but that's more the exception than the rule. I actually used to buy some fish from a Petsmart near where I used to work and they had 2 very knowledgable employees and kept their tanks cleaner than any store, chain or true fish store, that I've ever been in. You will, however, get much better advice here from people that have tons of experience than from most pet store employees.