Some Serious Problems....

[frogger009]

Hello,

New fish owner here, and I am having quit an issue here.

4 weeks ago, I bought my fish tank, a new 29 gallon in a kit. It came with a 100W heater and a AquaTech 20/40 Filter.

So I set it up, got some gravel, some decorations, and added some Seachem Stability with a school of 8 x-ray tetras. All was going well, and the tank cycled as advertised over the next 1 to 2 weeks, and I increased my fish with 6 peppered cories first, waited a few days, added a Betta, then after a few more days, added a Clown Pleco.

So all seemed good, consistent 0's in Ammonia and Nitrite and Nitrate slowly rising. Then I did my first water change... last Tuesday. a 35% water change with a light gravel vac. All hell broke loose.

The tank immediately became milky and cloudy. It stayed that way for a few days, and my Nitrates disappeared. My Ammonia has been constantly 1.5 since Thursday. Never changing, Nitrites and Nitrates are non existent. Lat Thursday, on the advise of Seachem Support, I increased my filtration with a Tom Aquarium Mini Canister to aid my Power Filter and increase Bio-Media for bacterial growth. The water cleared up considerably, but as mentioned, Ammonia has not changed.

Then on Sunday... It got worse. My Betta had Ich on it's fins. I removed the activated Carbon from my Aqua Tech. Removed my Purigen. and turned off my new canister filter (the activated carbon was brand new.. I didn't want to replace it). Increased my temp to 82 deg and treated with API super ich cure (Malachite Green base). Second dose is tommorow. No other fish show any signs of Ich. Just the Betta, who is now in a Betta Bunker attached to the inside of my aquarium so I can easily keep an eye on him.

So now... I have one of my two filters running with no mechanical or chemical filtration
A fish with Ich
Multiple scaleless fish and some sensitive to salt and extreme heat, making ich treatment harder.
My Ammonia is not changing from 1.5, which I am containing with daily doses of Stability and Prime.

On the bright side, all fish continue to eat and show other signs of being healthy (even Mr.Betta). No fatalities at this point.

I don't know what to do here though. I am afraid of water changing since it destroyed my tank last time. I can't stop with the Stability and Prime in fear of killing my fish. I basically have no filtration for the next 4 - 9 days until the Ich is gone.

Yeah I know... I suck.

 

[Mikaila31]

Your tank is not cycled properly. I suggest you read some of the pinned threads on cycling. But for now you need to do a water change ASAP. The ammonia is way to high, during a cycle you need to keep it below .25 even if that means daily water changes. I suggest doing a 50% water change right off the bat, then another 50% water change slightly later. I would remove all the carbon from your filters and run them both. Also the purigen is most likely one of the reasons you have suddenly had ammonia and nitrite problems. It is unnesicary in a stable tank, and would actually be considered harmful IMO. It removes ammonia and stops it from turning into nitrite, hence stopping the tank from cycling properly. It will eventually run out and stop removing the ammonia, which is probably what happened. Now your tank is cycling! You have a couple of options you can get a hold of some mature media, you can take all the fish back to the store and do a fishless cycle. or you can try to do a fish in cycle and hope your fish will survive the ammonia and nitrite poisoning along with the ich(most probably wont)

Also continue the ich med, it recommened to treat for two weeks after all signs have disappeared completely, or else it will come back.

 

[Joshy]

Jesus, i feel for you bud.
Just keep the water changes going, regularly.

Why would you take the carbon out of the filters may i ask anyone?
Sorry if that is a silly question.

 

[shelaghfishface]

think its beacause the carbon would remove the meds from the wtaer Joshy, so you need to run them after treatment and not during
shelagh xxx

 

[geer head]

Jesus, i feel for you bud.
Just keep the water changes going, regularly.

Why would you take the carbon out of the filters may i ask anyone?
Sorry if that is a silly question.

Carbon + Fish medication does not work. You need to remove carbon in your filter before you can add fish medication



A note on the water change amounts. I do not suggest a full 50%, but just less (around 35-40%) as doing too large of a water change at once can cause too many changes in other areas of your tank if not done properly (temp, ph, hardness, etc). I hope your tank gets better soon and you've learned the lesson of not adding too much at once! You have definitely added too many fish at once and your high ammonia levels are proof of that (your bacteria has not been able to grow fast enough to accommodate the new fish). Also, if you have not already, check to see if your tap water has chlorine or chloramine as when you treat chloramine you are left with ammonia if you don't treat it too!

Also, on the medication. It can be harmful to fish without a disease to be treated by medication. Be careful when treating one fish for a disease when your other fish are not sick (i.e. a quarantine tank).

For the filtration. The damage is done (partially), but I would not stop the mechanical filtration. Removing the carbon is the right thing to do, but the sponge in your filter also grows beneficial bacteria to fight ammonia and should always be kept 'alive.' Keep your filters on with the sponge.

Hope that helps.

 

[rabbut]

Good move removing the carbon and purigen, very few newcommer to the hobby (assuming you are new ) would realise that they needed to do this. Joshy, carbon is a chemical media, that removes polutants and medications form the water, hense why it needs removing when treating a disease.
Mikaila is right, the purigen is probibly the caurse of yor issue here, as it adsorbs ammonia more competitively than filter bacteria, thus it will have preented the cycle from starting. It was probibly just coincidence that the ammonia issues followed the waterchange, as you cannot predict when it will become saturated and stop adsorbing ammonia
Right now you are fish-in cycling. Prime is a good coice as it converts ammonia to ammonium that filter bacteria can still use, but is less toxic to fish Stability on the other hand is a waste of money IMO. No off the shelf "bacteria in the bottle" cycling aids work, and those that do need constant refirgeration to remain viable, or they contain an ammonia source that you do not want to be adding to a tank of fish

Have a read of [topic="224306"]this thread[/topic] for details in fish-in cycling.In that thread I explain the risks to the fish and what is going on, allong with explaining what you need to do

HTH
Rabbut

 

[rabbut]

A note on the water change amounts. I do not suggest a full 50%, but just less (around 35-40%) as doing too large of a water change at once can cause too many changes in other areas of your tank if not done properly (temp, ph, hardness, etc).

Ammonia and nitrite will caurse long-term damage to fish in these ammonts. The probibly small change in pH temp hardness e.t.c is going to be less damaging and more stressful to you fish than leaving them in all that ammonia. I'd personaly consider a 75% waterchange in these conditions

I don't think the issue here is a clear cut as too many fish at once I recon it is a combination of coincidence and typical poor advise from the LFS. They should have got you fishless cycling, rather than using fish for it, and stopped you from using purigen. However, LFS are prfit motivated thus will sell you fish, as if they die, they make more money when you come back to replace them. Also purigen needs regular replacement, thus it supplies them with a regular income stream LFS advise is usualy geard more towards making money than it is the welfare of the fish they are selling

All the best
Rabbut

 

[Miss Wiggle]

oh boy, definatley serious problems.

the tank is cycling so it doesn't have all the good bacteria it needs, the fish have ich so you need to treat for that, treating for ich can wipe out the bacteria colony especially when it's fragile in the cycling phase.

i would recommend you try to get hold of some mature media from somewhere which will get the tank cycled either instantly or within a couple of days. You also need to treat the ich, i recommend king british ws3, you'll need to do a half dose cos of the scaleless fish, if possible remove the scaless fish to another tank and treat them at half dose and the main tank at full dose.

agree with rabbut about the big water changes here. first thing to do is a massive water change, then maintain at least 30% changes every day until you've got this all sorted.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, textbook case of adding fish to a completely unprepared filter and not having any information about fishless cycling!

Large water changes, done correctly, are in order. The experts above will get you sorted out.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. What the heck is a "Purigen" and why would anyone use it?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

ps. What the heck is a "Purigen" and why would anyone use it?

short answer - it's rubbish and people would use it for the same reason people don't cycle..... bad advice from the fish shop

here's a link with the product sales pitch on http/www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/cat...250ml-p-82.html

 

[frogger009]

Well, thanks everyone for the advise so far.

Another day, all the fish still seem to be good. Despite his Ich, the Betta is otherwise behaving normally.

Yeah I am new to this, I bought the purigen because I was told it would remove the tannin color from my Driftwood. I have no mechanical or chemical filtration, because in both my filters, the Mechanical and chemical filtration are combined into one unit, so removing the chemical meant removing the mechanical. I still have whatever biological filtration I had because my Bio media is seperate from the other two in both filters (Bio-Fiber in one, Ceramic media in the other).

As for the Ich treatment, every site I have read says to treat the tank, not the one infected fish, as Ich lives in the tank itself. That is why I am treating the whole tank, and not just the Betta. I am using Half doses like the bottle says for my scaleless fish. I hope this is the right way to do it. Still no other fish have signs of Ich.

I am still showing no Nitrites or Nitrates. The thing that confuses me is, why is Ammonia never rising or dropping? It is the same, everyday. 1.5, 1.5, 1.5.

I was told Ammonium is not toxic to fish, hence why I keep adding Prime. My city water is not treated with any chemicals, so I know its not the tap water.

I was told that my filter did not have enough Bio media, and when I vaccuumed the gravel I killed all my bacteria. So I bought another filter with lots of space for Bio-Media.

Also, a co-worker said he would bring me his filter media from his canister filter. But it is apparently much larger than my filters, so how wuold I go about adding that to my tank because I only have a HOB and a mini canister that lacks any extra room.

 

[rabbut]

Have you checked your tap water for ammonia? Just because it is not treated does not mean that it doesn't contain ammonia Prime has supposidely given false highs to some users, though it should not theoreticaly do this. The test kit may also be dodgy. Take a sample of water to your LFS, and get the results cross-referenced with their kit

To add mature media from another filter, take some of the existing media out ad replace with the new media. Alternatively, put it in the place of your removed chemical media. If both of these aren't doable, place it in an ld sock and position by the outlet of one of the filters.

Ammonium is toxic to fish, just far less toxic than ammonia. I'm not entirely shure, but I think it is about twice as toxic as nitrate.

HTH
Rabbut

 

[waterdrop]

Hi frogger,

You are doing an excellent job for a newcomer who is trying to gather a lot of new information and has been given a lot of wrong information!

The large water changes will be your main tool right now and its not bad that you've also used Prime because it is indeed true that it changes ammonia into ammonium and that is not toxic to the fish. Its important to understand that while Prime has helped you, using chemicals will not be your normal procedure in the long run and ammonium, while not harming the fish, is not ideal in that it still looks just like ammonia to any ammonia test you do.

What testing kit are you using? You need to get a liquid-reagent based test kit. If you don't have one you please ask here for advice of the right types. Strips are not worth the paper they are printed on if that is what you are using. Seeing the same ammonia level over and over could either be because you are using strips or because of the Prime ammonia/ammonium thing we just talked about.

OK, back to the main event... You can't buy a biofilter, its not the media. I think you are already close to getting this down, but at the risk of repeating info you already know.. A new filter, with new media installed is just the raw hardware of a filter. It takes potentially many weeks to develop a biofilter by growing the correct two species of bacteria in the media of the filter so that they can convert ammonia into nitrite and then nitrite into the less toxic nitrate. Doing that filter development with fish in the tank can be exhausting and time-consuming work because you have to manually remove the two toxins, ammonia and nitrite from the tank on a daily or even more than once daily basis to keep the fish from experiencing gill damage that will have life-long ill effects.

Note that all the bacteria talk here has been about the filter media. Biofilm with bacteria do grow all over the inside of a tank, including the gravel, but only the filter media are the significant repositories of bacteria you need to worry about.

Mature media is a great way to introduce the correct bacteria. It must stay wet and be transferred relatively quickly of course. You need to get creative in making the media work between different filters. A typical scenerio is for the donor to take scissors and cut one third of a sponge in their filter.. then you cut your new sponge down in size such that you can cram that 1/3 into your filter, next to your 2/3 of new sponge that is still there. The idea from your end is to get as much of this mature media as you can, whereas from the donor's standpoint, the 1/3 business is to keep them from losing too much. If the media is ceramic rings or pepples, the process is even easier than with sponges. If the media is in some sort of plastic frame or proprietary form, it can be a little more difficult to figure something out.

Let the members know your situation in more detail.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[waterdrop]

Its typical in these situations to feel overwhelmed by the reading that's out there. I've found a lot of people seem to be helped by starting with Beginners Resource Center, Cycling Resource Center links in the pinned section and then looking at the articles by AlienAnna and Miss Wiggle, in addition to rabbuts article already linked. The RDD article is our main fishless cycling article and is important reading regardless of whether you are doing fishless or fish-in cycling, just because you need to be getting as much info as possible.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[frogger009]

I am using Tetratest Laborette liquid test kit.

I know I can't buy biological saturated media , I meant I bought a Filter with more room for it to grow, more than my HOB filter anyways.

All this talk about sponges is confusing me. Neither of my filters even has a sponge. The HOB has a Framed cartridge which serves as mechanical and chemical, and has another framed cartidge called "Bio-Fiber" where the bacteria is susposed to grow.

The other filter is a "mini canister" (I lack very much room, my tank is on my dresser, so my filters are behind it, so I had to buy small filters). It has two chambers, one has ceramics for bacteria growth, the other has a soft, removable thingy which again serves as mechanical and chemical filtration. However, this filter is currently off.