55 gallon that the fish keep passing away

ebethsanders

I have three tanks, one 30gallon w/ gourami's, one 10gallon w/ speckled platys, and a 55 gallon that no matter what I put in it it dies. We have changed the water, started over, taken out the live plants and put in plastic, gotten rid of an algea bloom problem, upgraded filters, had water tested everythings is fine, changed heaters, before the algea bloom the aquarium was fine; since the bloom everything we put in it dies.....HELP.

:(

GregV

just have a few questions, sorry if some of them are common sense but it helps to know

how long has it been since you started over? did you re-Cycle the tank?

what did you clean on the tank with any sort of soap or chemicals when you started over?

also when you uprgraded the filters, did you let the filter media get cultured in the tank with other filtering before you removed the older filter system?

what are the water parameters? we will probably need a little more information so we can be of more help.

Hope everything sorts itself out
Greg

ebethsanders

No that is fine, please ask whatever may help figure this out. Right now I have two gourami's and one Platy left and I just put them in yesterday started with six Platy's.....

to answer your questions:

We didn't use any soaps or chemicals when we started over/cleaned the tank.

Two months since we started over and yes we recycled the tank.

No to the filter question.

Please define water perameters... Temperature is 78

Any ideas/suggestions would be helpful.

Falina

Water parameters are amonia, nitrite and nitrate. Also ph, kh and gh but these are less important. Just the same parameters as you use to determine whether a tank has cycled or not.

ebethsanders

we've had the water tested at the pet store in fact three different one's on a regular basis and they say everything is where it should be....

Lupin

Welcome to Fishforum.com.

If I might suggest, you buy your own liquid test kit and determine your ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.:) I wouldn't trust your lfs to test your tank water. There is really something wrong with the water parameters when fish keep dying.

GregV

the filter media not being recultered could have a slight adverse effect on the fish, but i dont think it would cause alot of death in your fish.

but if it was happening before the filter switch would indicate that this inst the problem,

toilofday

If I remeber right, unrisned carbon can have some nasty chemicals in it. I read this when inquiring about making my own vodka and there was a MAJOR stress in properly cleaning your carbon before placing your liquor through it.

Obviously this would apply to fish as well. I'm not sure of the quality of carbon used for aquariums, but from my research ALL carbon has adverse chemicals in and anyplace that says different is either not knowledgable or lying.

That's just what i've read, and that all food grade related. I don't know about aquarium carbon, but i'd say it has the potential to be a culprit.


Try cleaning out the aquarium again

1 drain it, then dry it, then wipe it down with paper towel, and rinse your substrate in clean running water) I would even recomend cleaning with a very mild bleach solution 1:100 then letting the tank evaporate complety, rinse, dry and evaporate again. (just incase you have some fungus or bacteria killing your fish. You could try to boil your substrate if you don't like the bleach idea for the rocks.

2 fill with water and use a good water conditioner that dechlorinates (even if you don't use bleach to clean with) I use Novaqua because it has fish imune system helpers.

3 thoroughly rinse your filter media under the tap VERY WELL, then install that (only after the chlorine is removed)
(Note: Carbon will eventualy rinse clear as long as you are carefull with handling it, and it takes a VERY long time. 5 minutes of rinsing won't hurt a thing, but you hands may be pruney. If you keep seeing carbon dust rinsing out try being gentler with it under the tap.)

4 use something like Start Zyme or some other brand of enzyme bacteria replacement fluid to jump start your bio filter, but make sure your water is dechlorinated first.

That should get you on the right track.

You may want to get something like Black Skirt Tetras to get the tank cycled. They are very strong. Your fish may be dying due to the cycling. I remeber something about gourami's not be the most durrable. They aren't weak, but some can die in a cycle. I know my pear gourami started to look a little sickly then the nitrate and nitrites were at there peak. I was a little worried he'd bite the bullet so I did a 40% water change mid cycle. It helped.

That's all I've got. I'm pretty new to this, so if anybody sees a problem with my method, be sure to correct me.

GregV

i would just be wary of boiling the substrate, espcecially with gravel as rock can explode when doing this. not a fan of the bleach either, vinigir would probably a safer souloution to was the rocks in.

toilofday

just regular white vinegir, or is there some specific kind?