Water Parameters:
pH - about 7
Nitrates - about 10
Hardness - between 150-300ppm
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia - 0
KH/Buffer - 80ish
Water Temperature - 77-79 F
45 gallon
2 live Anubia plants
1 driftwood
2 air stones
2 aquaclear 70 HOB filters - carbon, poly filter and purigen being used
sand substrate
usually do a 25% water change every 2 weeks but probably switching to 10% every week
Current Stock:
4 Amano Shrimp
1 hillstream loach
2 oto catfish
1 glo danio
4 glo tetras
4 cory cats
5 guppies
I've had my tank set up since last January. Newbie here. I've had terrible luck and lost probably about 20 fish/shrimp/snails over that time. About 8 months in, I found out, by luck, that I had copper in my tap water. I have switched water source and now have no copper. Added poly filter and it turned really blue right away. I waited until all the copper was out of my water and made sure no more fish were dying before recently adding more. I don't currently have a quarantine tank.
My very first fish were 5 glo tetras and 5 glo danios from Petco. Not sure if they were sick when I got them. I have 1 remaining glo danio and 4 remaining glo tetras.
Put in 5 guppies a week ago. They were gorgeous. Now 1 has a tail more than half gone, 2 have beginning signs of fin rot, my lfs thinks I might have ich on my glo tetras tails.
Removed Carbon, Poly Filter and Purigen. Treated for 1 day with Melafix and MetroPlex (at the advice of my LFS). Felt like my 1 guppy was looking worse, another guppy is now sitting on the bottom breathing heavy and hiding, and had read that Melafix doesn't really treat fin rot but can aid in fin repair after the underlying bacteria is gone. So I did a 25% water change and followed Aquarium Co-Op's suggestion of treating with 1tsp of Ich-X per 10 gallon and Maracyn 1 packet per 10 gallons. (I treated for 40 gallons to account for the space the sand and decor takes up.)
It's now been 24 hours. I'm feeling like there is no improvement. I know I'm super anxious because I have lost so many fish and I'm new to treating my tank, but the YouTube video says to NOT follow the instructions and to just dose once and then leave the tank for a week. The instructions say to dose everyday. PLEASE HELP!!!
What do I do?????
Thanks so much.