Something fishy's going on!!!!

[jimbooo]

Hi Everyone,

this may be a little long winded so bear with me....

i bought a Juwel rekord 60 Tank (54 Litres / 10UKG) about 8 months ago. i cycled the tank for 4 weeks prior to adding fish. put 2 in at a time from there on every week or 2 thereafter untill fully stocked. when originally fully stocked community consisted of:

1X red crab
2X ACF (only tiny, not fish eating size)
10X Zebra Danio
1X Common Angel Fish
2X Pleco
1X Betta
4X Baloon Molly
2X Shark Catfish (Columbian Shark)

plus 6 live plants, 1 airstone and triton original tropical lamp

After a while i started to lose fish but with no sign of reason (no spots/ulcers etc...)

i have replaced them with others as they died but never exceeded the total stock size above (when a 2 inch died id replace with another 2 incher or 2 X 1 inch fish)

since then the following fish have been found doing the backstroke

- both ACF's plus one other (3 total)
- 3X Glass cats
- 2X shark catfish
- 4X Baloon Molly
- 3X Dwarf Gourami
- 2X Angel Fish
- 2X Zebra Danio
- 3X Swordtails
- 4X Guppy's (eaten by shark catfish - 99% Sure)


i may have missed a few but you get the idea.

Nitrate has always been around 100
Nitrate always 0 or pretty close
can't remember the rest but ammonia KH & PH are all at the right level.

has anyone any idea whats happening, this can't be normal.

 

[rvm]

I think the simple answer is massive overstocking. in a 10g tank you have huge amounts of fish, including 2 plecs which are the biggest filth machines going.
I think your 100ppm of nitrate shows this. This is a dangerously high level and is probably what is killing your fish!! Ideal nitrate levels should be around 30ppm. I would seriously rethink your stocking levels!!

 

[jimbooo]

Ahh so i'm the murderer after all Oops

to be honest the only fish that have survived throughout are the pleco's and most of the danio's..

i'm getting a 40UKG within the month i think i'll dump the whole lot in there and rethink the 10G.

i take it that will be big enough (it's the biggest that will fit in my flat)

Thanks for the advice

 

[rvm]

40G should be ok for most of them. you may want to rethink the plecs though. If they are common (which they most likely are if you don't know what they are) they will get to around 16" and crap all day long!!!! Also once they get to about 7-8" they get lazy and don't eat algae anyway!!
You could replace them with bristlenoses. they only get to about 6" and are good algae eaters

 

[jimbooo]

i was thinking of adding an Eheim external filter as well as the Juwel filter supplied, purely for Plec Poo... i know how big they get but i just love them. we'll deal with that at the time i think but thanks for the confirmation about tank size i feel a little better now.

If only fish were expensive i wouldn't keep buying them.... er what am i talking about. sorry for the stupid comment.

 

[rvm]

The extra filter will help, but all it will do is convert the massive amounts of ammonia and nitrite into nitrate quicker!!! The only way to deal with it is to increase your water changes significantly!!