Paula Blanca

So as of this this morning the last of the 4 fish in the heavily planted 29 gallon tank was dead. Interestingly I also had one plant completely covered in furry white fuzz. I also noticed all of my bladder snails (hitchhikers, never wanted them) are also dead. The water is cloudy. (FYI, some snails were still alive last night) The only thing that changed between everyone being fine and everyone being dead was a light surface vacuum of my sandy substrate and the poking in of a few plants that had some loose roots (less than half an inch, not a lot of stirring or digging in the substrate.) I did a 30 percent water change and declorinated with stress coat. The tank was up over a year with no deaths. My ammonia, nitrites and nitrates were all within normal limits after the first 2 fish croaked but I haven't retested today. So now I have a tank devoid of animal life. Seems like a great time to move around some plants. But whatever I did that caused the die off appears to have come from the sandy substrate. What should I do about that? Suck it all out and bleach it? Do a number of super deep substrate vacuums and change the water aggressively? How do I keep the beneficial bacteria going in my sponge filters if I messing around with something potentally toxic in the substrate and no fish are producing ammonia? I have zero interest in breaking down the tank as the plants are (or at least appear at this point) to be healthy and there is quite a bit invested in the lighting and such.

I have sand so I usually just hover the vacuum over the surface. I vacuum once a month. The thing I did differently this time was poke a couple of plants a little deeper in to the sand. I did notice the water was cloudier longer than usual after the cleaning and then today everyone dropped (floated?) dead and the water still seems cloudy. Both the oto and the siamese algae eater corpses were in great condition. They hadn't started decomposing at all. The algae eater had a little bit of slough above his lip but that was the only thing that made him look anything other than perfectly healthy sleeping fish. The other oto I thought was dead months ago - so now that the gourami is about to biff it I'm going to be stuck with another dead fish hunt because that is one super sneaky oto and I doubt he's going to live when 3 others died. What I think I want to do is rescape - I need to move some plants - treat the entire tank with fungal and bacterial meds and then restock (I prefer low stocked tanks). But my fear is that whatever happened in the substrate could happen again, or maybe that wasn't the issue at all anyway although unless my water suddenly had a massive pH swing from the tap (it's back to 7.2 now) I cannot figure out what the heck happened. Oh, and my temperature is steady too. Could I have gotten some sort of tainted stress coat? I put in the recommended amount to my bucket before I added it to the tank.

I am SO upset! I've had a 29 gallon, heavily planted, up and running with the same 4 fish for a year. A flame gourami, 2 otos and a siamese algae eater. I've not changed anything in months. The plants do a good job of keeping nitrates down so I usually top off the tank and then vacuum about once a month. I vacuumed with the same vacuum I always use about 30% of the water 3 days ago. I used stress coat to dechlorinate. Other than poking a few loose plant roots back in to the sand I changed nothing. Today I have a dead oto, a dead SAE and my gourami is definitely going to die. The last remaining oto is so hard to find that he may be dead soon too. What did I do to cause this mayhem!!!?! .25 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate. The only thing I didnt test was pH but I'm always right at 7.2 so unless disturbing the sand caused something to be released I am at a total loss. THe fish seemed fine yesterday and the day before. The gourami started being weird today and thats when we found the recently dead oto and algae eater. No white marks, not fungus, no clamped fins, no hemorraging, no holes, no missing scales. Perfectly normal looking fish except for the dead part.

I'm setting up a 10 gallon quarantine tank. If you read my earlier post you'll know I've had problems. Anyway, in sorting those problems out it occurs to me that I never want to have to set up another quarantine tank and really just need to keep one running all the time. What do you do to keep yours active? Plop a solo betta in there? Keep a few fish compatible with your main tank and temporarily transfer them over to the big tank while you use the quarantine for sick fish or new additions? I am determined to not suffer MTS and only keep a 29 and now a 10 for quarantine. Both will be same temp, pH, etc. The 29 is heavily planted, the 10 will probably not be planted at all. Thanks in advance for suggestions!

Thank you to all. I just did a 75% change and put in fresh water and stress coat. I'll order some more starter bacteria too.

So if you have too much ammonia the bacteria just simply can't keep up and it persistently stays at high ammonia? That's news to me so just want to confirm I understand correctly.

I started a 10 gallon tank using a HOB filter that had been running in my 29 gallon for 6 months. At first all went well. Ammonia went down, nitrite went up, then down, nitrate went up. I did a 25% water change to bring down the nitrates any then everything went wrong. The whole cycle crashed. The hitchhiker bladder snails from the HOB all died. Ammonia went through the roof. I did a 90% water change, added Fritz bacteria and tried again. And For MONTHS my ammonia is 8ppm, nitrites and nitrates are non existent. I top off the water with tap water using stress coat. My 29 gallon gets the same treatment and all 3 fish are doing just fine. My tap water has no ammonia and is soft water, I've been using that water in my 29 gallon for well over a year with no issues. I dosed the 10 gallon with fritz bacteria directly into the filter twice about 3 weeks apart I ghost feed (the same tiny amount I feed my other 3 fishes in the 29 gallon) to give the bacteria something to work on. No lights. No plants. Gravel substrate. Heat is at the same temp as my successful 29 gallon. I am losing my mind. How do I get this damn tank to cycle? I don't even want to use it for a display tank, just a quarantine. Help please?