Disaster

[borissimo]

Overnight we have just lost the majority of our fish. The airline came undone and despite two external filters all but one of the adult cichlids, aged 1 - 4 years were dead when we arrived this morning. Yesterday when we left them at around 5pm (they are at our place of business) they were absolutely fine. Apart from my cichlid with the tumour (on emergency thread) they were all very healthy, never ill, always hungry. I cannot believe they have gone. One of the synodontis was still dying when we arrived, the other seems to be ok. I tested the water this morning and the nitrite was high. It is usually nil.
If the water is ever slightly 'dodgy' I can always tell immediately by the way the fish behave and I change it immediately, but this only happens rarely as I change it anyway. The tank was becoming a bit overstocked and no doubt that did not help. We were originally told to crowd the fish to stop aggression but then we were also given some fish which bred like mad - we removed the rocks this morning and there are a lot of babies under the rocks.

If it wasn't for our one original cichlid that has managed to survive I would just give them all away. I have given a lot of the babies (the ones we could catch) to the LFS this morning.

 

[adamgreen240]

sorry to hear about your losses

 

[borissimo]

Thank you.

I can't believe I was just feeding them their favourite romaine lettuce by hand yesterday afternoon (it couldn't have been that - I always wash it thoroughly first).

 

[ephiedoodle]

that's awful,sorry for your loss.

 

[borissimo]

Thank you

 

[dc3]

Sorry for your loss - it's a real shame to lose a pet and even harder when you have a catastrophe like this...


What kinda external filters are you running? I'm curious because if it's an air-line - I am assuming it is driving a hydrosponge or something? Did you recently set up those filters (and so the bacteria hasn't yet caught on the bio media)? I've forgotten to turn on a filter once after feeding and my nitrite levels went up too - but nothing really high. You should check out your filters and see what the problem is - just to avoid anything similar

 

[england]

iam sorry for you loss mate

does seem strange mind i would imagine that they should be able to cope for that ammount of time......cichlids are usually made of strong stuff
maybe someone here could shead some light soon at some point

 

[chrisdoesntmiss]

It sounds as though they just asphyxiated. Sorry to hear

 

[Underwurlde]

But in a 'normally' stocked tank, you don't need that, do you? So it is strange....

(Sorry to hear of your losses btw).

Andy

 

[borissimo]

We have since noticed that there was a kink in the hose of one of the filters, the Rena XP3. The other filter was only a Fluval 205 so I guess it couldn't cope. Neither of us can think how it happened as it is at the bank of the tank, which is a corner tank, and there is no need to reach around there unless we are cleaning the filter. By horrible coincidence, I went to a local aquatic shop yesterday to look for filter pads for the Rena but they didn't have them. If they had, we would have cleaned the filter and changed the pads at that point. Both filters had been cleaned a few days ago.

It is obviously our fault, but we are devastated.

 

[dc3]

When you say pads in the Rena filter - do you mean those coarse sponges? you don't really need to change those unless they are in terrible shape - just rinse them out in tank water when you do filter maintenance... Unless it's something wholly different - i'm not familiar with Renas...

 

[borissimo]

Yes, the sponges. We usually just rinsed them but as they were looking a bit old (they were about a year old) we had decided to replace them.

I feel the need to explain why our tank was overstocked:

We had the original cichlid by accident in a bag with bristlenose catfish from a shop. To cut a long story short, we couldn't catch him to take him back and ended up putting him in a separate tank and buying a few other cichlids.

With 12 fish, we then had an aggression problem but the tank was too small to put any more fish in. So after having a chat with our LFS (part of a nationwide chain of aquatic shops and all having knowledgeable staff) we bought a 220ltr tank and were advised to put at least 20 fish in. We put in around that number and then an aquaintance who keeps a lot of marine and tropical fish brought us in a few babies. Unfortunately these were the fish that have been breeding a lot lately.

Late last year we went on holiday and asked the LFS to look after our cichlids which they did. The LFS knew how many there were and we discussed the possibility of a corner tank with them, thinking we could build up the rocks more easily for them. They said that the 290 ltr corner tank we were looking at would be fine for our fish.

When we got back from holiday we set up the tank and went to collect our fish. We immediately regretted our purchase and knew that at some point in the not-too-distance future we would have to get a bigger tank. However, they all seemed to settle in fine, had healthy appetitites, never ill (except the one with the tumour) and all had individual personalities (the original fish all had names) and were all always interested in their surroundings.

We can only assume that the disaster was a cumulation of several problems - the kink in the filter hose and the airline coming undone must have led to the nitrite rising rapidly plus too many fish and not enough air.

I have spent a sleepless night thinking about what my beautiful fish suffered and so have paid very dearly for this awful mistake. This morning it was awful coming in to see only my original fish plus a few babies (& one syno) waiting for me.

 

[Underwurlde]

Yes, the sponges. We usually just rinsed them but as they were looking a bit old (they were about a year old) we had decided to replace them.

As already spotted, that was the major problem. IMO it was nothing to do with air lines.

Your new filters would have been useless. In the future, run old along side new for a couple of months and then gradually remove the old, buliding up the new.

Don't beat yourself up, this is a surprisingly common mistake, more often than not fuelled by LFS etc telling people to do this. You live & learn!

Andy

 

[borissimo]

Sorry I think you misunderstood what I said. We were GOING to replace the sponges but had not done so. The sponges in the filter when the fish died were the same ones that had been in there for about one year.

It is just that IF I had managed to purchase the sponges we would have looked at the filter and realised there was a problem with it. As it was, the shop didn't have them in stock.

The filters had been running without any problem until this happened. As the Reno filter is between the tank and a wall nothing SHOULD have disturbed it, but obviously something did because we found the kink, which had restricted the flow.

 

[mark.w.jones]

Still seems quite a major disaster to me for just 12 hours running on one perfectly good exteral filter and another running at a much lower flow rate. Anyhow, your unfortunate case does highlight one of the major dangers of overfiltering to cope with over stocking of a tank. In these circumstances if things go wrong they unfortunately go very wrong. As you say. In a properly stocked tank, I doubt very much that you would have had such a catastrophic loss.

Saying that. Us fish keepers are a hardy bunch and from every mistake bounce back with greater knowledge and enthusiasm about this brilliant hobby.