During a recent visit from another forum member and experienced fishkeeper, we noticed a dead fish in one of our tanks.
When our visitor enquired regarding our water paramters, we realised it had been some time since we had checked the pH, ammonia levels of our tanks.
Because our fish seemed happy and were producing heaps of fry, we had become casual about testing the water quality. Weekly water changes had sometimes become once every 10 days- we have at times been guilty of overfeeding and during our renovations, we had removed substrate from some tanks and swapped fish around without even thinking whether the waters parameters of the tanks were similar.
When tested, we found the pH levels quite a bit below what we had thought they would be and the tank with the dead fish in it had "spiked".
It was an expensive but valuable lesson as we lost half our electric yellow colony ... but my reason in posting this story here is to say a big "thank you" to the member who brought our attention to this problem - and also to ask all members to stand up and applaud qldcichlid.com, its moderators, members and sponsors .... we have met so many nice people with similar interests (fish), have received such helpful advice and learned sooo much - fishkeeping is like that, huh, you just never stop learning.
Where would we be without qldciclid.com ... ?????
Thanks all
Regards
You aren't the only one Carol...
Too bad about your colony.... :(
I must confess I'm a bit casual, once I get a tank established I don't really test it at all after a 6 mth period. However I am carelful how I move around or swap rocks and substrate, knowing that a lot of beneficial bacteria lives in those places. Same for fish - I don't make any huge increases of fish in one tank all at once.
Also not so casual that I don't keep up water changes once a fortnight at least, make sure I use water conditioner everytime and replace salt buffer. I have the test kits but would only test every once in while (like every other month!)
Guess it's a fine line between being too casual or being too labour-intensive, because on the other hand I don't want it to become too much hard work that I lose interest.
And it makes it harder when you have individual tanks instead of it all plumbed up into a sump. A lot of people who have sumped systems tend to be very casual about it including myself.
It's hard when you have grown so fast from 1 tank to 15 tanks and running out of room let alone get it sumped. I bet you can't wait to get it sumped up.
Cheers,
dan
I think we all get a bit slack, but in your case its not the lack of water changes, but rather, not understanding why it crashed.
Once you work that out, at least that wont happen again.
Theo
Thank you all for sharing your experiences ... and for the advice.
However, lets not miss the whole point of this post, that is - "hats off" to qld.cichlid.com and their members for being so helpful and taking the time and trouble to help out others.
Regards
and yes, Theo ... you are correct - we were unaware this was happening - but have worked out why it happened.
The short version of the story was that we had lost all the good bacteria from the tank from TOO much cleaning .... and rest assured, it was a lesson well learned - and at least we know, that problem will not happen again.
Thanks again for all your helpful advice and support.
Regards
i once lost an entire tank full of fish, not all at once but slowly other a 2 month period. because i was so fed up and lost alot of money in fish i had a vet do an autopsy. what he discovered was that the fishes gills had being slowly burning away. the cause of the problem was me being lazy and running water from a sink mounted water purifier straight to the tank via a hose. the water purifier does NOT remove chlorine (unless it goes thruogh a few different mediums). so basically the chlorine burnt the fishes gills so badly that they were no longer able to absorb oxygen. it was an expensive lesson but since then have being quite strict with my water changing methods. the only one to survive was a male rostratus who i still alive and rules my 6ft display.
cheers
chris
Ya i have done that
I have over feed my fish once and spicked the tank
And lost a lot of fish that time
And i did that water purifier trick only lost a few fish that time
I check my tanks every week and do a water change every 2 weeks on the lightly stocked tanks and every week on the rest
Its so easy just to plod a long and think every thing is ok till over nite
You loose 1/2 the fish in your tank
Andrew
Yay, finally after 3 years of telling people about these filters, I finally have the proof about these things being useless on Chlorine.
But I am terribly sorry you had to find out the hard way, not a nice way to learn about these things.
Theo
yep Im lazy.I only have the one display tank and do 25% water change probably once a month or so.
Feed only once a day or every other day.
I dont play with the water other than adding seacheam safe and seachem cichlid lake salt when water changing.
De-gunk the canister filter every six months and swap over the bag of purigen
IMO the less you play with the water the better chance you have of maintaining a stable environment. This way works well for me, and the fish and the tank couldn't be happier....just look at em
:D
[img:4ed08f1013]http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j224/ashgilliver/PA200002.jpg[/img:4ed08f1013]
Ulysses, just one question. What is your carbonate & general hardness of your water out of the tap?
Frenchy :D
[quote:3b623b1f08="Ulysses048"]However, lets not miss the whole point of this post, that is - "hats off" to qldcichlid.com
Regards[/quote:3b623b1f08]
Thanks from everyone here, we normally only get mention when something doesnt work. :wink: