I am relatively new to keeping fish. I have a 10 gallon tank with 3 tetra skirts, 3 guppies and a snail. I have had this tank for about 6 months now with no problems with anything. I recently was out of town for a week and when I got home I found one of my guppies dead and the water cloudy. Upon further inspection the guppies fins and tail were gone and that's when I noticed something was growing on my tank wall. I poked it with my fish net and it is hard and not squishy. I'm not sure what it is. Is it fish eggs?
A ten gallon tank can't go a week without changing out some of the tank water. A tank this size needs half the water changed a couple of times a week, if you want to keep the inhabitants healthy.
The water chemistry in a small tank can change very quickly and fish aren't tolerant of changes in their water. The water wasn't removed and replaced while you were gone and I'm guessing the nitrogen from the dissolving fish waste fouled the water.
You were lucky to have such hardy fish. They apparently got used to the poor water conditions over time. In this case, a sudden water change would have been fatal. I think since my fish are living in the same water they put all their waste into, they'd appreciate large, regular water changes.
Sure the fish live in the water they put all their waste into. Just like in the world.
And it just seems to make sense to remove all that waste.
But:
Water changes will allow that waste(nitrates or whatever) to build up to where the water changes removes that build up. So if you change 1/10 of the water and nitrates increase at 5ppm you have 50ppm nitrates just before water changes.
By contrast in my tanks that ran for 9-10 years nitrates were unmeasurable. Because the water was constantly being maintained in a 0 nitrate environment.
The levels of nitrogen in the water aren't really a good indication of water quality. As we recall from our high school chemistry classes, minerals in the tap water are changed in the presence of oxygen in the air. The longer the same water stays in the tank, the more the water chemistry changes. We need to change a lot of the tank water weekly if we hope to keep the water quality stable and safe for our fish. But, why am I telling you about this? You've been in the water keeping hobby for a long time and already know this stuff. Apologies!
Another way is to balance out and stabilize operations do that the water properties do not change.
my .02
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