Gravel And Cloudy Water

[sarahandjo]

Hallo

I am fairly new to tropical fish keeping although have kept pond fish for many years. I had (on behalf of my 7 year old son) a 22l tank with five danios and one catfish in it. We bought a bigger tank when we moved house. It is a 48l tank. I was intending to cycle that tank before adding fish but the filter in the old tank died and we ended up adding the fish to the new tank after a day because the nitrite levels in the old tank were getting high. I had used a dechlorinator and a filter start product in the new tank. I also moved in a very small filter from another tank which houses one chinese loach.

Two of the Danios have died preceeded by rapid gill movements and hanging at the bottom and than loss of balance. The water has also been milky although that has now cleared. I am not happy at the behaviour of the other danios although the catfish(albino) is fine. The ammonia and nitrate levels are fine but the danios do not look entirely "right" to me. Advice please?

 

[mattlee]

Hallo

I am fairly new to tropical fish keeping although have kept pond fish for many years. I had (on behalf of my 7 year old son) a 22l tank with five danios and one catfish in it. We bought a bigger tank when we moved house. It is a 48l tank. I was intending to cycle that tank before adding fish but the filter in the old tank died and we ended up adding the fish to the new tank after a day because the nitrite levels in the old tank were getting high. I had used a dechlorinator and a filter start product in the new tank. I also moved in a very small filter from another tank which houses one chinese loach.

Two of the Danios have died preceeded by rapid gill movements and hanging at the bottom and than loss of balance. The water has also been milky although that has now cleared. I am not happy at the behaviour of the other danios although the catfish(albino) is fine. The ammonia and nitrate levels are fine but the danios do not look entirely "right" to me. Advice please?

The filter from the tank with the chinese loach should have a bit of bacteria in it to kick start your new one. if nitrite levels are present then a water change is needed, try a 40/50% change and check for nitrites after an hour or so. you will be in a fish in cycle and water changes sometimes 2 or 3 a day may be needed...... filter start products are apparently a waste of time and money but as you have it i guess it wont do any harm in adding it. the milky water could have been just dust/dirt on the gravel, was it washed before adding to the tank?
im not sure what temp your fish require but the higher the temp the quicker the bacteria will grow in the filter, but dont crank it right up as this will stress the fish also. check out on here or on google etc to find the highest temp you can have and set it at that.
the albino catfish i assume is a cory.... if so it will need a couple more of its kind to make him feel more secure and they should schoal too which is great to watch.... not too sure about the chinese loach but if its the one im familiar with then i think it can grow to about 6/8 inches so might be too big for the tank. is it yellow and long and thin in shape? does it have a sucker mouth?
keep changing the water until the tank is stable and you should be ok, good luck

 

[sarahandjo]

thank you. Yes the catfish is a Cory. Yes to the description of the loach. My alternative with that one is to keep it on its own - is that OK? The nitrite levels were showing zero but I will keep going with the water changes. The gravel was washed before adding and none of the tests I have done have shown any problem. the water is really quite hard but that was the case in the last tank too. The tank temperature is 25degrees.

The danios were doing better in the tank with the high nitrite levels than they are now which is a puzzle to me.

 

[mattlee]

thank you. Yes the catfish is a Cory. Yes to the description of the loach. My alternative with that one is to keep it on its own - is that OK? The nitrite levels were showing zero but I will keep going with the water changes. The gravel was washed before adding and none of the tests I have done have shown any problem. the water is really quite hard but that was the case in the last tank too. The tank temperature is 25degrees.

The danios were doing better in the tank with the high nitrite levels than they are now which is a puzzle to me.

if the cloudiness has cleared then i wouldnt worry about that as your filters have sorted it out for you the chinese loach is an algae eater but it will need a mature filter too and if thats in the new tank you will have 2 fish in cycles going on 1 is bad enough just for the amount of water changes needed. are you using test strips or liquid based test kits?

 

[sarahandjo]

Using both kinds of test strip - one multipurpose and a liquid one to check ammonia and nitrite. Levels are OK. Is there anything else that could be stressing the Danios but not the catfish?

The loach is on his own at present - ie without a filter as I have borrowed it to help the main tank get started. I know that is not sustainable.

 

[waterdrop]

What are the actual numbers you are getting on the liquid ammonia and nitrite tests? They should be zero, there should be no question of traces. What is your number for nitrate(NO3) and how often are you deep gravel cleaning?

The fish without any filter will need large water changes (try not to let ammonia or nitrite(NO2) rise above 0.25ppm per your liquid tests.) Use conditioner and rough temp matching on larger water changes like that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[sarahandjo]

Ammonia is zero but nitrite is 0.25mg. Nitrate is 0. I guess some more fairly large water changes are in order?

The Loach had a large water change this morning. He was sold to me as suitable for a small tank set up but I removed him from the main tank when he started to bully the Cory. He is a bit of a problem to me as I don't really know what to do with him now other than continue the solitary confinement which is not natural.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, numbers such as these was what I suspected. Seeing your fish sitting still and moving their gills differently than usual was sign one. Seeing the milky cloudiness was sign two. Seeing a reading (any reading at all) is sign three that you are not cycled (ie. in some way or another the colonies of one or the other or both of the two species of bacteria we need in the filter are not large enough to handle the waste level of the tank.) If fishkeeping its always good to be suspicious of any of these signs as a potential biofilter problem. Working on solving that (ie. large water changes with good technique) will not hurt the fish (except in rare case where the tank hasn't been cleaned in years) and won't hurt anything even if the diagnosis turns out to be wrong.

You are in what we call a "fish-in cycling situation" and can benefit from using our article on that in the Beginners Resource Center. Basically it helps you use good water changing technique (use conditioner to remove chlorine/chloramine from the return water (after using your gravel vac to remove 50 to 70% of your tank water) (it wouldn't hurt to use 1.5x to 2x dose of your conditioner (but not more than 2x) and roughly temperature match the return water using your hand to judge. And then the core of the "fish-in" process is to use your liquid ammonia and nitrite(NO2) tests to be a bit of a detective and figure out what percentage and frequency of water changes will keep ammonia and nitrite near zero and below 0.25ppm before you can be back home to perform another water change. It might actually take the larger 50 to 70% ones you start off with, but your tests might indicate you can get by with less. Start off testing twice a day, morning and evening usually.

In your case the filter probably was cycled before so it may return to being cycled very quickly. Good luck! Worst case for fish-in cycling (if it were a brand new filter) would be a little over 30 days of work.

~~waterdrop~~