Goldy Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 I have a 38 gal planted tank, mainly out of hand Vals & a couple fair sized Crypts and a few others. I wanted to redo my tank so Monday night I ripped my plants out, this stirred things up quite a bit. I have small gravel mixed with Laterlite(?) for a substrate. Anyways changed out about 1/2 of the water & replanted my plants & a few vals. Tuesday everything was fine, water cleared & everything seemed normal. Wednesday before leaving for work I noticed my 3 Bosemani Rainbows & 2 tetras perished. I did not have time for any action except to remove them. Got home from work & my algae eater & another tetra where dead. I tested the water & did another water change of about 1/3. I did not clean my canister filter on either change. My test results were: ammonia = 0, nitrite = 0, nitrate = approx. 0 & phosphate = approx. 0. Any suggestions on why? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
werner Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 How long has the tank been running? What are your normal water change amounts and frequencies? Does the substrate get vacuumed or disturbed regularly? Did you test hardness or pH? Might be Old Tank Syndrome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baos Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 Just thinking out of the box but if you stirred everything up you could have a lot of extra (beneficial) bacteria right now eating up all the o2 that would normaly just live where they are in the substrate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldy Posted January 14, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 I NEED HELP!! Baos might have an interesting theory. Yesterday when I got home the fish were swimming around like normal, Thrusday morning I noticed they were at the top sucking air & another 3 perished over night, plus 2 more when I got home from work Wednesday. The only other thing that I did was I have a small CO2 canister that I refilled, it has a bubble wall but took that out & routed the tubing to go to the filter intake. Tuesday I also got some plant clippings from some fellow members, I rinsed them & they are currently floating around right now. The tank has been running at its current location for 2.5 years, a few more years before I moved to this current location. I do a 1/3 water change about every 3 weeks vacuuming gravel so it does get disturbed. My vals grow like crazy so about 6 months ago I sort of did the same thing but not to this degree, just removed a bunch of vals so the substrate got disturbed at that point as well with no effects. I did not test ph or hardness, I use normal tap water treated with prime, nothing new there, my other tank is fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catshanon Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 If your fish is sucking air in the morning that means oxygen is depleted and they have come up to the surface to get oxygen. I also experienced the same once. I have an Eheim and a magnum. The magnum's flow creates surface agitation, and I had unplugged it one night. In the morning, I lost a cardinal and saw most of the fish gulping air. I immediately plugged the magnum back in and then within 30 minutes, things were normal again. When you took out the plants, did you thin them out a lot ? I am suspecting that you thinned them heavily and so the amount of oxygen they produce was reduced. Also, if your gravel was not stirred for a long long time, anaerobic bacteria can create black spots inside the gravel. This is usually a source of Hydrogen sulphide, and when you stir up the gravel, this gets released and affects the fish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
werner Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 (edited) If your fish is sucking air in the morning that means oxygen is depleted and they have come up to the surface to get oxygen. Gasping can also be due to high CO2 levels overnight. Removing your bubble wall may have reduced the tank circulation enough that your fish are experiencing O2 starvation or CO2 poisoning. Are you using DIY CO2? A newly recharged mix may have pushed the levels too high (and resulted in a pH crash), especially if the tank has slowly dropped in pH and hardness over time. Please test the ph and KH. Edited January 14, 2010 by werner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jvision Posted January 14, 2010 Report Share Posted January 14, 2010 You say you routed your CO2 to your filter intake - what kind of filter are you running? If it's a canister, I have hear that you can get over saturation of CO2, leading to what Werner is talking about. I route my CO2 to the intake of a powerhead, which (if not running on a solenoid) I plug into the timer with my lights. This way CO2 is only being dispersed during the day, and cannot lead to CO2 poisoning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goldy Posted January 15, 2010 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2010 My ph is 7.4 & hardness is 160 acording to the LFS. I could not get an accurate reading with my GH test kit. I have a Marineland C-220 canister filter with a DIY CO2, I removed a bunch of Vals as they were getting out of hand. My guess is that it is old tank syndrome. I must of released some gases when I went routing around in there. Lesson learned the hard way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.