spidergravy
New Member
Hello there
I;ve just posted about my neon tetra, but while I'm with you and I have your attention, I'd really appreciate some help with my water quality. It's rubbish.
I inherited the tank, all 220 or so litres of it, from a friend of a friend in January. She said that one of its inhabitants was 19 years old, but I don't know the age of the tank. For all I know it might not be that far off that age. She hadn't cleaned it in a very long time, and it had an under-gravel filtration system. When we moved the tank I took just about all the water with me, but I noticed that there was a LOT of gunk, powdery, slimy or generally muddy, under the gravel. Eventually I replaced the undergravel filter - actually, I turned it off and left the framework where it was, but added my external tetratec 1200 filter instead. I've had very little luck adding fish to the tank, as they often die quite quickly, which was my first indication of something being wrong.
My water stats are as follows:
nitrite - 0ppm
ammonia - 0ppm
pH - 7.0 - 7.2
KH - 3dKH (53ppm)
GH - more than 40dGH (>700ppm) - seriously, I got bored of adding drops after 40
Also, my nitrates are sky high. Off the scale, like the GH. My water test kit is a liquid one by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, but I also use test strips to measure the nitrates because for some reason the liquid one doesn't test that.
I take about 20 litres out of my 250 litre tank about once every 10 days to two weeks. I suction the gravel at the same time. I change the white woolly filter then too, and every few weeks I change the carbon one. Haven't got round to changing anything else in the filter canister.
Fish-wise I have a giant common pleco, half a dozen neon tetra, a dozen or so guppies, a clown loach, a black shark, five minnows, four swordtails and two danios. The last few times I've changed the white wooly filter, and this week when I removed the carbon to treat ich, I've noticed something weird in the filter. Tiny white balls, look a bit like eggs, no more than a milimetre across in both the wool and the carbon filter. They appear to be organic rather than gravel, but there are hundreds of them. My first thought was some sort of mite (cos I used to do entymology) or eggs, or maybe snail eggs, but I really don't know. I was having flood-issues when I changed the filter this time, so I didn't get photos, but does this sound familiar to anyone?
I've tried nitrate-minus, and a variety of other products guaranteed to reduce nitrates, but nothing has worked so far. I'd not checked the hardness before, so the GH reading is actually a bit of a shock to me and I've not tried anything to reduce that at all. Any suggestions? I'm a bit concerned about all the gunk under the gravel but I hoover it quite regularly and I understand that sometimes this is actually good for the bacterial colonies in there.
Please, treat me as a newbie, pretend I haven't been doing this for a while, and give me some pointers as to just how often I should be doing what.
Hope you can help...
I;ve just posted about my neon tetra, but while I'm with you and I have your attention, I'd really appreciate some help with my water quality. It's rubbish.
I inherited the tank, all 220 or so litres of it, from a friend of a friend in January. She said that one of its inhabitants was 19 years old, but I don't know the age of the tank. For all I know it might not be that far off that age. She hadn't cleaned it in a very long time, and it had an under-gravel filtration system. When we moved the tank I took just about all the water with me, but I noticed that there was a LOT of gunk, powdery, slimy or generally muddy, under the gravel. Eventually I replaced the undergravel filter - actually, I turned it off and left the framework where it was, but added my external tetratec 1200 filter instead. I've had very little luck adding fish to the tank, as they often die quite quickly, which was my first indication of something being wrong.
My water stats are as follows:
nitrite - 0ppm
ammonia - 0ppm
pH - 7.0 - 7.2
KH - 3dKH (53ppm)
GH - more than 40dGH (>700ppm) - seriously, I got bored of adding drops after 40
Also, my nitrates are sky high. Off the scale, like the GH. My water test kit is a liquid one by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, but I also use test strips to measure the nitrates because for some reason the liquid one doesn't test that.
I take about 20 litres out of my 250 litre tank about once every 10 days to two weeks. I suction the gravel at the same time. I change the white woolly filter then too, and every few weeks I change the carbon one. Haven't got round to changing anything else in the filter canister.
Fish-wise I have a giant common pleco, half a dozen neon tetra, a dozen or so guppies, a clown loach, a black shark, five minnows, four swordtails and two danios. The last few times I've changed the white wooly filter, and this week when I removed the carbon to treat ich, I've noticed something weird in the filter. Tiny white balls, look a bit like eggs, no more than a milimetre across in both the wool and the carbon filter. They appear to be organic rather than gravel, but there are hundreds of them. My first thought was some sort of mite (cos I used to do entymology) or eggs, or maybe snail eggs, but I really don't know. I was having flood-issues when I changed the filter this time, so I didn't get photos, but does this sound familiar to anyone?
I've tried nitrate-minus, and a variety of other products guaranteed to reduce nitrates, but nothing has worked so far. I'd not checked the hardness before, so the GH reading is actually a bit of a shock to me and I've not tried anything to reduce that at all. Any suggestions? I'm a bit concerned about all the gunk under the gravel but I hoover it quite regularly and I understand that sometimes this is actually good for the bacterial colonies in there.
Please, treat me as a newbie, pretend I haven't been doing this for a while, and give me some pointers as to just how often I should be doing what.
Hope you can help...
/www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html
