Hi, I'm a newbie when it comes to keeping a tropical aquarium so any advice would be gratefully appreciated as I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle to the 2 problems below. I bought a 110 ltr tank a month ago, heater, filter, lights etc came with it as a package. I did what I should and cleaned everything, filled the tank adding in bioactive tapsafe and filter start and left it a week before buying fish. I bought a mexican walking fish, and 4 tiger barbs - the tiger barbs died one after the other the next day. At first they seemed happy and were darting round the tank in a group, the next day they were all at the surface no longer in a group trying to get air (or thats how it looked anyway). I then re-read my filter leaflet and established that the top of the filter needed to be out the water in order to feed oxygen into the tank so I corrected this immediatley but it was too late for the tiger barbs as this didn't seem to make any difference.
Problem 1 - I then decided to invest in a water test kit before getting any more fish (which I now know I should have done at the start), one of those liquid 5 test thingys, anyway I established the ph level of my water was way off chart - a really dark purple. The results of the other tests were all fine as the tank was only a few weeks old by this point. I assumed that it must have been a combination of the ph and lack of oxygen that killed off the tiger barbs so my next step was to find ways of decreasing my ph level. I tested the water out my tap and this was also a very high ph (slightly lighter purple but not much) - I live in a very old listed building so maybe this has something to do with the pipework in the building increasing the ph before coming out the tap(?) After weeks of searching for answers I decided to go for some peat moss to go in my filter which should hopefully bring the ph level down (haven't got this yet, waiting for delivery). I guess only time will tell for this method, I really don't want to add more chemicals to the water ph as I've heard lots about them doing more harm than good.
Problem 2 - in the 3rd week of setup (my mexican walking fish is still doing fine oddly) I noticed a brown staining appearing on everything within the tank, gravel, filter, heater, ornaments, flowers (plastic) and the longer it was left, the worse it got. I figured I'd clean it, took the ornaments out and 90% of the water, cleaned everything from top to bottom filled with water again and tapsafe etc and after a few days it's back again. After a week it looked so bad I had to clean it again! 90% of the water, gravel, literally everything got a thorough cleaning. This was last tuesday, and again within a few days the brown algea was appearing again...6 days later it looks like I haven't cleaned it for years!!!
It looks like another thorough cleaning session and 90% water change but I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good? I know I should only be cleaning 10 - 15% of the water every week but it gets so dirty in there thats why I chose to do 90%. I can't keep on doing this every week and I have read it does go away eventually but how long is eventually??? I'm only a month into having this tank and already I'm getting fed up with it, I guess all I want is for someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it? My mexican walking fish ("Buster" my daughter has named it lol) is still doing really well but I want to add fish to the tank too but at the moment this isn't looking possible. Help
Problem 1 - I then decided to invest in a water test kit before getting any more fish (which I now know I should have done at the start), one of those liquid 5 test thingys, anyway I established the ph level of my water was way off chart - a really dark purple. The results of the other tests were all fine as the tank was only a few weeks old by this point. I assumed that it must have been a combination of the ph and lack of oxygen that killed off the tiger barbs so my next step was to find ways of decreasing my ph level. I tested the water out my tap and this was also a very high ph (slightly lighter purple but not much) - I live in a very old listed building so maybe this has something to do with the pipework in the building increasing the ph before coming out the tap(?) After weeks of searching for answers I decided to go for some peat moss to go in my filter which should hopefully bring the ph level down (haven't got this yet, waiting for delivery). I guess only time will tell for this method, I really don't want to add more chemicals to the water ph as I've heard lots about them doing more harm than good.
Problem 2 - in the 3rd week of setup (my mexican walking fish is still doing fine oddly) I noticed a brown staining appearing on everything within the tank, gravel, filter, heater, ornaments, flowers (plastic) and the longer it was left, the worse it got. I figured I'd clean it, took the ornaments out and 90% of the water, cleaned everything from top to bottom filled with water again and tapsafe etc and after a few days it's back again. After a week it looked so bad I had to clean it again! 90% of the water, gravel, literally everything got a thorough cleaning. This was last tuesday, and again within a few days the brown algea was appearing again...6 days later it looks like I haven't cleaned it for years!!!
It looks like another thorough cleaning session and 90% water change but I'm wondering if I'm doing more harm than good? I know I should only be cleaning 10 - 15% of the water every week but it gets so dirty in there thats why I chose to do 90%. I can't keep on doing this every week and I have read it does go away eventually but how long is eventually??? I'm only a month into having this tank and already I'm getting fed up with it, I guess all I want is for someone to tell me what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it? My mexican walking fish ("Buster" my daughter has named it lol) is still doing really well but I want to add fish to the tank too but at the moment this isn't looking possible. Help