How do I "redo" an aquarium

amazon21

Hey, I'm new to this forum, and I was hoping I could get some advice on redoing my aquarium.

I currently have a 29 Gallon aquarium glass tank. I started out with a couple of fake plants, and used a zebra danio to cycle the aquarium, and later on added 3 more of them. There were absolutely no problems. I gradually added neon tetra's to the tank as well, 1 a week until i got to 4. The neon tetra's were fine as well. 1 month later the trouble started. One of my zebra danio's got some kind of disease. His stomach area kind of caved in slowly, and he had fin rot. Next it happened to my other Zebra danio's and eventually , in 3 weeks, all my danio's were dead, and I was left with 4 neon tetra's. These neon tetra's were next. Soon, after a month, the exact same thing happened to my neon tetra's. I kept changing the water every 2 weeks, but the fish would still die. I did about 2, 50% water changes because I read that water changes should be able to get rid of many diseases. Unfortunately that didn't solve the problem. Over the next month those fish died, and now I'm left with an empty tank.


I don't know exactly what mistake I made, but there is some bacteria in my water that is killing off even the most hardiest of fish. So my first step for getting my amazon biotope aquarium is to rid my tank of this disease. I still remember how the last fish looked when it died, it's stomach area kind of caved in, it was VERY skinny, even if I fed it (I did not overfeed, or underfeed), it's fins had fin rot, and its eyes kind of bulged out. Im not exactly sure what disease it is, but it looks similar to neon tetra disease or Fish TB. Either way, I don't think medications will do the job, so Im going to try and start over.

The only problem is how do I do that?? I've heard that one way is to put all your decorations in boiling water, but then I read the post about boiling rocks, and I don't feel safe boiling my gravel. I've also read somewhere that chlorine works, but im not sure if that would get it done. Anybody have experience with this??

Byron

Hello, and welcome to Tropical Fish Keeping forum.

I am indeed sad to hear of such a catastrophe, but glad it has not caused you to leave the hobby as a hopeless endeavour. I think the first thing is to try and discover exact;ly what caused the demise of the fish, and you might want to post a description in the Disease section where more of our knowledgeable aquarists in that area [I am certainly not one of these] will see it.

Once you know what it probably was, methods to disinfect (or get rid of) the decor and gravel will be easier to decide.

Byron.

outpost

If your going to do a amazon biotope you won't be using the fake plants I assume. If I were you I would Not use the decorations that you were thinking about boiling. Your gravel is probably to big to use in a planted tank anyways so you will most likely be better off starting out fresh there also. I'm setting up my 80 gallon planted tank right now with pool filter sand. Some guys on here use it and love it. In the pic/vid section a guy has a 47 gallon planted build wth PFS. You should take a look at it.
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amazon21

I won't be using any of the decorations, but the gravel isn't that big. This is what I got http://www.petco.com/product/107329/...0Gravel-107329. The picture is enlarged so if you scroll down, you can see some of the pictures in the reviews, the second page of reviews has a better picture of the gravel. I think its small enough.

Byron

That gravel will work. If you are thinking of replacing it, I would recommend something dark and small grain, 1-2mm. This provides the best substrate for plants which presumably will be in the amazonian aquascape, and the dark colour not only sets off the fish and plants but makes the fish feel more comfortable and they will respond by being at their best colouration.

Byron.

JohnnyD44

I concur with Byron on the color of gravel. I originally had white gravel and it made my tank very bright, I went the planted route and went with a dark gravel, I can't begin to tell you what an aazming transformation it was to both build and watch evolve, I had my plant build thread on here somewhere.... i dunno what happened to it, maybe it's time for an update! (i know it's in the planted section)