What Went Wrong With My Quarantine Tank?

[Discovery86]

First, let me apologize if any of these questions are answered elsewhere. My Dad is in the hospital, and I don't have time to surf the internet like I used to.

Up to about a couple weeks ago I had 5 Bleeding Heart Tetras and 3 Lemon tetras in my 30 Gal tank. The Bleeding hearts started to look green on top, and I think one was hemorrhaging. I put them in a quarantine tank and started to treat them and within 48 hours they were dead. The ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite were all at 0. The tank is 5.5 gal, probably to small, but it's all I could afford. I put in 5 gal of water, 3 from my existing tank. I put in a heater and tetra micro filter, without the carbon since the carbon could absorb the meds. I treated with maracyn, maracyn 2, and melafix. Were the fish just to far gone, or did I do something wrong??
I'm going to clean out the tank and start it over again, can anyone give me a link to somplace that explains how to do it?

Now, some questions about my 30 gal.
I'm having trouble with the nitrAte. It's not high, stays below 15ppm -- I have trouble reading the results -- but it had been staying below 5 ppm. At first I thought it was due to overfeeding my fish, but I've cut way back and I don't think I'm overfeeding anymore. I've had to start doing water changes every week to keep the levels down. Any ideas why I'm having this spike? Any ideas what to do about it other than water changes?

I'd like to change my substrate. I think it's not dark enough for tetras. What is the best way to do this? I will most likely go with gravel - I'm not quite sold on sand yet - What color would be best??

I'm going to be installing a new filter in a couple of months, what's the best way to go about doing that? I'm also going to make my own cartridges for it, since it's cheaper. Any do's and dont's???
(the new filter is an Emperor 280)

Right now I have plastic plants and decorations. I'd like to get some live ones. Can anyone suggest low maintenance ones? Also, what is the best way to 'plant' them? - I have gravel substrate. What kind of maintenance will they need? fertilizer, frequency of pruning, etc.

Last, I'm having trouble with my bubble wall. I have a Whisper Air Pump 40. I can't seem to get the bubbles to come up evenly. I finally took off two of the pieces of the bubble tubing which left me with one piece about 5 or 6 inches. It works ok most of the time, but sometimes there are only bubbles in one end, or the center, sometimes there are only 2 streams of bubbles. Am I doing something wrong, or is the pump not strong enough??

Thanks for any help you can give me, and if the answer is somwhere else in the forum, please post a link to it.

Tetragirl86

 

[sinistral]

I think I'll try to address just a few of the questions you've posed.

My guess about your quarantine tank is that nothing went wrong once you put the fish in it. It sounds to me like, although you did what you could, the fish were pretty far gone. If you were determined to nuke the tank to ensure that all pathogens were destroyed, you might consider bleaching it in a 1:10 dilution. There's a link here, although there are probably better descriptions. I'm not sure that this is necessary, though. If the illness that killed your fish started in your 30g, and you are considering cleaning out the 5.5g where they died, wouldn't you also think about doing the same cleaning treatment to your 30g? If your lemon tetras are fine, then I might just use regular hot water.

If I were you, I'd simply start measuring the nitrate less frequently. 15ppm is nothing to worry about. Nitrate test kits AFAIK aren't all that reliable. You might have had low initial levels of nitrate as your cycle was finishing. As your tank matures you will most likely get more stable readings over time. If you choose to plant your tank, they will also utilise nitrates (and other nitrogenous waste) for food.

How much do you feed the fish? Do you have a sense of what caused the bleeding hearts to become sick in the first place? How do the lemon tetras look?

If you know that you have a few months to replace a filter, I'd recommend running the old and new filters side by side in the tank. The new filter will become seeded with bacteria and will be functional when you are ready to switch over.

Lastly, I'm sorry to hear about your dad, and wish you and him the best.

HTH~

 

[Discovery86]

I'm not planning to bleach the tank, just take everything out, wash it in really hot water, and set it up in a different location. Next time I clean the 30 gal I'll take out all the decorations and wash those really well, too.

I feed the fish tetra-min tropical crisps, a small pinch once a day. They eat it within 5 minutes. Once in a while I give them frozen brine shrimp, but not much because it really makes a mess if they don't eat it all.

The only thing I can think of that might have made them sick is that when I added some fish in April (the 3 lemons, and 2 bleeding hearts) there was something wrong with one of them. Before I added those the only things I noticed that didn't seem normal was that one would always hide inside one of the decorations, and they wouldn't come to the top for food. It seems like they would have died sooner if it was something from one of the new fish, though.
The Lemon Tetras look pretty good, not red at all like the Bleeding hearts were. They are active, come to the top for their food. I can't really tell if they are the yellow-green color the others got since they're already yellow.

Tetragirl86

 

[avirex]

1 PINCH 5 MINUTES?

LOL MY BARBS EAT A PINCH IN ABOUT 1 SECOND