Red Tail Black Shark

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Soloflux

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Hi there, I need a little advice on my red tail black shark. I've had him for about 3 weeks now and thought he would benefit from a tank to himself rather than sharing with my loaches and mollies. I noticed something a little strange about him though as I tranfered him from one tank to the new one. He has gone quite pale (or seems to have gone pale) and his tail fin isn't as red as it used to be... It's still deep red where the tail and body meet but the tip of the tail has gone almost transparent with a red tint. Is this a sign of illness? He isn't acting out of character but one thing I realised is, I've never actually seen him eat food. I've seen him foraging and rustling through the gravel and plants, but when I put food in, I have never seen him take any. I got some sinking pellets for catfish for another tank and thought these would help him if he prefers to forage but even then, he ignores the pellets/spread. I'm thinking this is why he is losing colour... cause he isn't eating enough beneficial food. Could I be right here? I have done a test on the water and everything is as it should be, possibly a little on the hard side for a fish like him but he's been fine so far and he came from a tank (at the shop) with the same kind of water so it's not that.

Any advice/tips would be much appreciated! I have become quite fond of this fish and promoted his tank to my desktop so I can enjoy watching him whilst on the comp!

Many thanks in advance.

One thing I think I should mention (having read up on these fish a little) is that he has plenty of hiding places (in the old tank and more in the new one). And both tanks were well planted. So he has loads of places to shy out to if he feels that way (he's actually quite curious and likes to watch activity outside the tank).
 
Hi,

What size tank is the red tailed shark in?

Loss of colour is usually related to stress, if you have recently moved the fish from one tank to another then this may have caused some stress to the fish and it may take a few days before he gets used to the new surroundings etc.

Try keep the light off as much as possible for the next few days, this helps calm the fish.

Andy
 
ah then that could be it, the tank it was in was a 55ltr with the loach and mollies. Now it's in a 65ltr on his own BUT the light in that tank is really bright! Twice as bright as the other tank... So I'll keep that light off then and make sure he's disturbed as little as possible. But he does seem to be happy and active. Nothing out of the ordinary with his behaviour, just colour loss which is why I was worried. In order to get him feeding a bit actively, would it be a good idea to starve him for 3/4 days and then pop some food in? would that help?

thanks.
 
ah then that could be it, the tank it was in was a 55ltr with the loach and mollies. Now it's in a 65ltr on his own BUT the light in that tank is really bright! Twice as bright as the other tank... So I'll keep that light off then and make sure he's disturbed as little as possible. But he does seem to be happy and active. Nothing out of the ordinary with his behaviour, just colour loss which is why I was worried. In order to get him feeding a bit actively, would it be a good idea to starve him for 3/4 days and then pop some food in? would that help?

thanks.

RTBS can be problems. unfortunately, 55L is not enough space, more like 55ukg to be honest. he is stressed. move him to a bigger tank. 


I know thats not what you want to hear. but there is no way around it.

 
Ok so, I cant do a larger tank space/money are unavailable so Sharky has gone back to the shop... BUT I have another problem I could use some help on now though.

My older 2ft tank 15G tank which is now empty of fish has a constant ammonia level of 8... I tested it and got 8, did a 90% water change and got... 8! How is this possible? Thinking about it today whilst I'm working, I'm thinking it could be something to do with the dechlorinator? I'm going to test some tap water tonight, then dechlorinate it and test again... see what happens. Because the 15g has been empty for 2weeks now with a water change every other day (when I finish work early enough) it should have dropped by now given that there are NO fish in there to add to the ammonia...

The test kit I have is the API master test kit freshwater. I need to get this sorted because I have to do water changes every other day on my other 15g tank now due to over population (enough space for them, just not enough water to dilute the mess). Any ideas what I could do to sort this?

Plus, I have a new tumble dryer now which has a "steam" function where it distils the water from the wet clothes and condenses into a tank... would this distilled water be ok for a tank? I was thinking of collecting it a water butt and letting it stand till I need it given that I could fill a 100ltr water butt in a matter of days with this thing... what do you think?
 
My older 2ft tank 15G tank which is now empty of fish has a constant ammonia level of 8... I tested it and got 8, did a 90% water change and got... 8! How is this possible? Thinking about it today whilst I'm working, I'm thinking it could be something to do with the dechlorinator? I'm going to test some tap water tonight, then dechlorinate it and test again... see what happens. Because the 15g has been empty for 2weeks now with a water change every other day (when I finish work early enough) it should have dropped by now given that there are NO fish in there to add to the ammonia...

What filter are you using? The tank for the distilled water sounds cool, give it a test with your API and see how it compares to your tap water
 
The filter is tetratec IN600+ 50l-100l and the water test I did AFTER the dechlorinator tested 2 for ammonia BEFORE putting it in the tank... now either there is something wrong with my water supply or the test kit (liquid API test kit so not likely) or I am reading the chart wrong...

I went out last now and bought a few things to hopefully sort this out so I can once again place fish in the tank!
Ammo-chips to detoxify the ammonia (As a last resort... like I said, I need to put the fish back soon. The tank they are in is far too over populated with the fish already in there!) <-- I would really appreciate any feedback/advice/suggestions with this product and if I wasted my money or not! Obviously the tank has yet to fully cycle and I was told this really helps if you have an ammonia spike during cycling. As I said, I have a tetratec IN600+ (see below) which has two of the cartridges shown in that img. I figured if I really need it, I could keep the media in the bottom one (to catch the water first encouraging the bacteria to still flourish on it) and place the ammo-chips in the top one (to filter out the remaining ammonia not caught by the bacteria in the media below) -does this make sense? and will it work?
produit_10383_2.png



Stress Coat+ because I noticed on the bottle it actually states that it removes the ammonia associated with chloramines (which i think is why I never get a different reading after water changes)
Stress Zyme to make sure the filter is properly equipped to deal with ammonia.


I haven't tested the distilled water but I'll post an update when I do. The tumble dryer I got was called a "Lavatherm" which as I said, basically uses the water removed during drying, to steam the clothes afterwards but if your distilled water tank is full, you have to throw the rest away which with distilled water, seems a waste!
 
My wife bought me this filter today. Would anyone rate it? Does anyone use it? (sorry to bump into a thread but I did learn something from reading it, didn't realise some water conditioners can leave ammonia in new water..!)
 
I've never heard of dechlorinators leaving ammonia in the water. I know many of the dechlors transform ammonia into the less harmful state of ammonium which is still picked up by some test kits

Andy
 
yeah thats what I meant lol ammonium. Handy to know in future!
 
So without meaning to butt in on this thread again, does the filter still remove ammonium? It obviously shares very similar make up if it shows as ammonia right? So I would imagine the filter would sort it?

Also Soloflux, if you are using that filter and getting the same ammonia levels day in and day out even after changes, is that related to the filter? Does that mean the filter is lame? A couple of online reviews say that it is really good for a tank up to 15 gallons UK.
 
The dechlorinators do not remove the ammonia that comes from breaking the chemical bond of chloramine to remove the chlorine. Instead they make it less harmful by converting it to ammonium. The filter bacteria will not care what form they get their ammonia in, they will just keep removing it and processing it through to nitrates in a mature tank. The test kits usually just test total ammonia so you will read ammonia even if it is in the ammonium form. My tap water runs about 1 ppm after I use my dechlorinator to break the chemical bonds of chloramine. Once the water is in my tank, the ammonia reading of the tank water drops to zero in just a couple of hours. Since I only do about a 25% water change, the ammonia levels never do show more than 0.25 ppm and disappear so quickly that I do not worry about it.
You have a remaining ammonia source in your tank and it is not the tap water. Look into your filter and clean it out so there is nothing in it that is decaying. Gravel vac the substrate to make sure there is no decaying waste just laying in the gravel. Toss any dead or dying plants so that they stop contributing to the ammonia levels. Something is feeding ammonia into the tank and replacing 8 ppm water with 2 ppm water will reduce levels, not raise them.
 
One other thought, although it's a long shot: How well do you rinse out your test tubes? I'm not sure what kind of an effect this would have on an ammonia test, but other tests can be skewed if the tubes haven't been rinsed enough.
 

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