Brow Alage, Fish Death, High Nitrite

[bigdave2009]

hello everyone,

so i started this new 55 gallon tank and everything was going great. i was using a mature filter with a new one and let it run for a few days. i then put the fish into the tank after a few days and everything was great. plants were blooming, fish were happy. all of sudden nitrites are over the roof, brown spots are growing on the filter and plants, some fin rot on one fish, and many others died as well. iam through all that, iam waiting for the filter to cycle obviously and i should be ok with the few fish i have left. i trimmed most of the plants with the brown spots and re-scaped the whole tank. i dont like it now, so i dont know what im going to do. anyway, any advice or input for me would be great. thanks

 

[chicklette]

You are still cycling now. So you are going threw the cycling stages now. That is why you fish died.

What are your other parameters? Ammonia, Nitrate and ph? To get the nitrites down you will need to do some water changes.

At this point I would feed very lightly. How often do you clean your tank?

With the algae you can just scrub away. Depending on the fish you have in there you can add some algae eaters. However, you must wait until you are cycled before adding and new fish.

some fin rot on one fish

For the fin rot I would add some melafix and primafix. Depending on the fish you have in your tank you can add some salt. Some species of fish are sensitive so be careful. What fish do you have in the tanK

Maybe you added to many at the beginning.

 

[Amerce]

What I would ask is how many fish at one time did you put into the tank ?

As previously said a couple of days is not enough to ensure that your tank can cope with a large bio load you could have overloaded the system and the bacteria has not been able to deal with it.

Please provide more info on how many fish and what your water stats are.

 

[fourthtimelucky]

When you say you let the mature filter run for a few days, were you adding ammonia/food to the tank? If you put mature bacteria into an empty tank (no fish, no ammonia) then it begins to die off as there is no food for the bacteria to live on.

Where did you get your mature filter media from? Is there any chance you can get a bit more from the same source?

What are your stats for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate?

Good luck!