Fish health

[Guest_151734]

Can anyone give me advise of where i might be going wrong. My tank has been going now for about 1 to 2 years, I have had problems in the past. every time i get new fish like tetras i end up losing them one at a time after 2 days of getting them. the colour goes dime and they have a hard time swimming right, then eventually die. Before I got my receive fish, the tank had in it 1 spotted pleco and 3 plates. All relevant chemicals have been checked and are normal for introducing new fish. I have a live plant in the tank and have been adding live bacterial as i have a high level of Gh, which I am also using O.R water to help reduce.

 

[Slaphppy7]

Welcome to TFF

Just how high is your gh? What kind of test kit are you using?

 

[GaryE]

Generally, if you lose all new arrivals within a few days of getting them, and your tank checks out, then the issue isn't at your place. I would try different sources for fish, and would give myself an online tutorial for spotting disease.

 

[Guest_151734]

Welcome to TFF

Just how high is your gh? What kind of test kit are you using?

i get the aquatics shop to do the test and they use the ICA NT Labs NT170 6 - in - 1Multi test kit or some like it to test everything.

 

[Slaphppy7]

It would behoove you to be doing your own testing...many of us use this one: https://apifishcare.com/product/freshwater-master-test-kit

 

[Wills]

i get the aquatics shop to do the test and they use the ICA NT Labs NT170 6 - in - 1Multi test kit or some like it to test everything.

Hi welcome to the forum

As mentioned above I would get your own test kit and get an understanding of whats going on. When you say you have a high gh so need to add bacteria products, those two things are not dependent on each other and I suspect you're spending money when you don't need to.

Using the RO water is possibly a good step but do you know how hard your water is? Using RO water can cause problems unless you are really accurate with how much you are mixing and can cause fluctuations which can cause a shock in the fish that can kill them. If you dont have a figure go on your local water company site and see what info they give you, sometimes they have a postcode search to give you either a gh or ppm figure, if you let us know that we can help you work it out.

Also do you know if your shop is keeping them in the same water as you? For example if they are keeping them in pure RO water or tap water your mix at home is likely to be different which again can cause issues.

I suspect that the problem is somewhere around this from how you are describing them. The other thing is are they always Tetras and are they Neon Tetras? Neons are super over bred and a lot of the farms have an incurable disease running through them so Neons are generally best avoided unless they are from specific sources.

Wills

 

[Guest_151734]

Hi welcome to the forum

As mentioned above I would get your own test kit and get an understanding of whats going on. When you say you have a high gh so need to add bacteria products, those two things are not dependent on each other and I suspect you're spending money when you don't need to.

Using the RO water is possibly a good step but do you know how hard your water is? Using RO water can cause problems unless you are really accurate with how much you are mixing and can cause fluctuations which can cause a shock in the fish that can kill them. If you dont have a figure go on your local water company site and see what info they give you, sometimes they have a postcode search to give you either a gh or ppm figure, if you let us know that we can help you work it out.

Also do you know if your shop is keeping them in the same water as you? For example if they are keeping them in pure RO water or tap water your mix at home is likely to be different which again can cause issues.

I suspect that the problem is somewhere around this from how you are describing them. The other thing is are they always Tetras and are they Neon Tetras? Neons are super over bred and a lot of the farms have an incurable disease running through them so Neons are generally best avoided unless they are from specific sources.

Wills

Hi welcome to the forum

As mentioned above I would get your own test kit and get an understanding of whats going on. When you say you have a high gh so need to add bacteria products, those two things are not dependent on each other and I suspect you're spending money when you don't need to.

Using the RO water is possibly a good step but do you know how hard your water is? Using RO water can cause problems unless you are really accurate with how much you are mixing and can cause fluctuations which can cause a shock in the fish that can kill them. If you dont have a figure go on your local water company site and see what info they give you, sometimes they have a postcode search to give you either a gh or ppm figure, if you let us know that we can help you work it out.

Also do you know if your shop is keeping them in the same water as you? For example if they are keeping them in pure RO water or tap water your mix at home is likely to be different which again can cause issues.

I suspect that the problem is somewhere around this from how you are describing them. The other thing is are they always Tetras and are they Neon Tetras? Neons are super over bred and a lot of the farms have an incurable disease running through them so Neons are generally best avoided unless they are from specific sources.

Wills

Hello thanks for helping. According to this website https://www.aquacure.co.uk/knowledge-base/uk-hard-water-map/?postcode=ST16+1fu. My water hardness is over 201ppm. When I get my waters gh tested at the shop
. The test kits says the number of drops of solution should be 7 or 8 for the colour to turn. When my water is tested it takes around 21 drops to change. When doing a water change I use 5 lts of RO water and 5 lts of tap water with a cap full of prime.

 

[Wills]

Hello thanks for helping. According to this website https://www.aquacure.co.uk/knowledge-base/uk-hard-water-map/?postcode=ST16+1fu. My water hardness is over 201ppm. When I get my waters gh tested at the shop
. The test kits says the number of drops of solution should be 7 or 8 for the colour to turn. When my water is tested it takes around 21 drops to change. When doing a water change I use 5 lts of RO water and 5 lts of tap water with a cap full of prime.

Most hardness tests change colour when you reach the level so 21 drops would mean a gh of 21 which is between 350 and 400ppm. So halving that with your water change is 10.5 or 175-200ppm but if you are only changing 10 litres during a water change how big is your tank?

With water that hard have you considered African Rift Lake Cichlids? If you have a 4 foot tank loads of options, if its smaller though there are still options.

Wills

 

[Guest_151734]

Most hardness tests change colour when you reach the level so 21 drops would mean a gh of 21 which is between 350 and 400ppm. So halving that with your water change is 10.5 or 175-200ppm but if you are only changing 10 litres during a water change how big is your tank?

With water that hard have you considered African Rift Lake Cichlids? If you have a 4 foot tank loads of options, if its smaller though there are still options.

Wills

My tank is around 60 litres

 

[itiwhetu]

I just read the instructions for Prime, it says one cap full for two hundred liters of water and you are dosing at one cap full to ten liters. and in fact, the RO water doesn't need it, so you are dosing a cap full to five liters. That may be part of your problem.

 

[Wills]

I think @itiwhetu has a good point about the dosing of Prime.

How often are you doing water changes? 10 litres out of 60 is not really enough to make a dent in anything, you really want to be doing at least 50% at a time - which I appreciate could be causing issues with the amount of RO water you'll need.

With the bacteria product you are adding - when did you start with that and what was the reason? Just wondering if you have had any issues with ammonia or nitrite?

I'd be really interested to see your water test results from an API kit as I think that would give us the info to get your answer of whats going on.

 

[Guest_151734]

I think @itiwhetu has a good point about the dosing of Prime.

How often are you doing water changes? 10 litres out of 60 is not really enough to make a dent in anything, you really want to be doing at least 50% at a time - which I appreciate could be causing issues with the amount of RO water you'll need.

With the bacteria product you are adding - when did you start with that and what was the reason? Just wondering if you have had any issues with ammonia or nitrite?

I'd be really interested to see your water test results from an API kit as I think that would give us the info to get your answer of whats going on.

I do a water change once a week. the shop thought adding the live bacteria would help with ammonia and they thought that the hight gh level interfering wit the cycle. when in do my next water chage which should be this friday i can do 1 10 litre of RO water and 2 of tap water with prime. that should be 50%. maybe not doing the 50% is doing more harm than good.