[Help. Fish died after automatic feeder dumped in too much food]

The colors on the 2 remaining fish have come back and are better than I have seen them. So maybe the water cleanup did the trick.

 

[Help. Fish died after automatic feeder dumped in too much food]

That makes sense.  Probably have same situation. Unfortunately the food spillage Probably made it worse. The fish seem ok today though and are less reluctant too eat. One is still a little reluctant. 

[Help. Fish died after automatic feeder dumped in too much food]

It happened right before bedtime.  I cleaned as much out as I could reach. If I had known fish were going to die I would have stayed up and done a water change then.

 

The weird thing is that after I did the 95per cent water change the nitrate was still high but there was a lot of stuff floating in the water still. But a few hours later it went down to 20 percent and the next day 5 percent.  I'm think the substrate is really dirty as it has not been cleaned in awhile. The water was really Murky when I first got the aquarium. So maybe nitrates already high and fish food didn't help.

If you touch the soil at all a cloud of murkiness erupts. Originally I thought maybe it was supposed to be like that for the plants.  But last water change tried to vacuum some out.  But still lots there to do next time.

[Help. Fish died after automatic feeder dumped in too much food]

First off, I just inherited the tank (and it's problems) and am just learning.  Saturday night the fish feeder dumped in way too much food.  I scooped a lot of it out but some of it floated to the bottom.  The fish seemed well and healthy. The next morning I had 3 dead fish at the bottom and the 2 left were struggling near the top.  I saved the 2 left.  What happened? Could the food have caused that? Did the water go toxic because if the food?

 

First off I changed 65% of the water about 9 days prior to that disaster, as well as a filter cleaning (fluval 306), when I first got the aquarium. So I wasn't expecting water to go bad so soon in an established tank. My tank is 45 gallons with some anubias plants and major black beard algae.  I am just  learning about testing the water.  The water that the fish died in I did do a nitrate test after and it was high, about 110ppm+.  I didn't do any other tests. 

 

Then I changed almost all of the water and scrubbed off a lot of the algae from things and plants   The nitrates went down to 20 ppm. And today I tested it at less than 5ppm. Today I also tested ammonia at zero, nitrite at zero. 

 

The other thing is I threw out the fish food that was in the feeder during the panic thinking it was bad. Now the remaining fish just spit out the food I bought. Don't know what they ate before but it was also a flake food. Do they just  not like the food? Or are they stressed? They used to eat the other food like crazy. Now, they go for the food but spit it out. 

[Hi]

Hi I just inherited a nice 45 gal fish tank with live plants and some Rainbow fish (I think).  I am just learning about it. I hope this forum can help me. The last fish tank I had was almost 30 years ago and I was just a kid. So I am really a newbie.  I have been doing a lot of research already and learning about everything. Here is a few pics.

 

[Plant id]

Hi, just inherited this fish tank. I am wondering what the stuff on this leaf and rock is and if it's good or bad for the fish.  Also, do you know what kind of plant it is?  Thanks.