HELP ME!

[Audikashi]

I have a 5 gallon tank with single betta fish in it. It has 4 small Java ferns and recently added a new Anubis that was quarentine before I put it in the tank. I have white aquarium sand as substrate with seachem root tabs added in. The filter I use is the one that came with the tank. The tanks is a Top Fin Premium Glass Aquarium. I have Fluval Bio-Foam as a filter along with a bag of Fluval Biomax media. I have an air stone in the side of the tank with the filter to keep that water back there moving. I have a heater that keeps the tank at about 80 degrees. I add seachem Stability and Pristine at every water change. I use seachem prime to mix my new water. I went on vacation the week of June 13th and I pretty sure the person watching my fish over fed him and when I got back my tank was a disaster and my fish looked aweful. With many water changes and the addition of Seachem Stress coat I got him looking better and the tank looking better ( It was covered in algae) The ammonia lever then was close to 8ppm. Once My fish and tank were healthy looking. I kept doing 50% water changes but nothing got rid of the ammonia. I have cleaned and cleaned that tank. I fasted my fish for about 5 days to see if that would help and I got it down to 3ppm. But nothing I do seems to help. I am at my wits end. I don't know what else to do for my fish. I got home yesterday after work and noticed he was starting to get fin rot so I did another water change and started Stresscoat and antibiotics. Is it time for me to take the tank down and start over I dont know where the ammonia is comming from. I dont think its food I feed him piece by piece and watch him eat it. I just dont kno what else to do. I have other plants in quarentine thinking more plants are better but now I am afraid because the fin rot started shortly after i added the Anubis. Please help me if you have any advice!!

[Guppysnail]

The label on pristine says use it then correct the excess detritus that caused a need to use it. I do not think it is designed as an additive on a regular basis. It accelerates the breakdown of detritus. This could be adding to your issues instead of helping. Most times less is best when adding chemicals to tanks. Stress from all you have going on may have aided in the fin rot. The anubias I doubt was the actual cause of the fin rot. Good luck I hope others chime in with advice. 

[Audikashi]

Thanks @Guppysnail I guess I thought since I was doing so many water changes and I was disrupting the biofilter so I needed to keep adding it back. I will decrease the use and see if that helps!

[Guppysnail]

For your other plants if you want a bit more peace of mind than just quarantine you may want to try Reverse Respiration. I’ll attach the thread but here is a short version for pest control etc. 

get a bottle of plain seltzer water. Submerge plants in the dark for 9 hours (do not use tight lids on leafy plants, cover loosely or leave open in a dark room). Then return them to aerated water to eliminate pest snails eggs etc. 

 

[Audikashi]

@Guppysnail That is amazing and so interesting. I printed it off and will start that tonight! What an interesting study! Thank you for all your help!

[Colu]

It possible the root tabs you added are causing the ammonia as you only have plant that take nutrients from the water column root tabs are unnecessary 

[Audikashi]

Oh ok thank you @Colu I'll take them out!

[Tanked]

On 7/8/2022 at 7:52 AM, Audikashi said:

I kept doing 50% water changes but nothing got rid of the ammonia. I have cleaned and cleaned that tank. I fasted my fish for about 5 days to see if that would help and I got it down to 3ppm. But nothing I do seems to help.

 

Slow Down    

The first thing I noticed in your post was 1 fish, 4 small plants, over feeding , and root tabs.  Every time you clean, you remove some of the bacteria required to breakdown the ammonia.  I would hope that one of the cleanings included deep cleaning the gravel.  The Anubia does not cause fin rot, but excessive fussing (stress) with the aquarium combined with poor water conditions will.   Adding plants will help. Adding a sponge filter will help.  Adding a small amount of salt may help the fin rot.

[Audikashi]

I have sand which I hate and want to get rid of in the future because its so hard to gravel vac but haven't yet because I have been too nervous to completely take the tank apart but I do my best with a syphon and a baster. And when I say "Clean" I mean my daily 50% water changes. I was following the recommendation I saw on Aquarium co-op YouTube channel. I feed him 3 pellets once a day. Is that too much? I was only worried about the Anubia because it was so new I was worried I had introduced something into my tank that the plant could have just had on it. I was pretty sure it was my water but I just nervous. I will definitely remove the root tabs when I get home today. I will be adding plants as soon as I get them cleaned off following the reverse respiration protocol. What sponge filter do you recommend?

[Wrencher_Scott]

On 7/8/2022 at 4:52 AM, Audikashi said:

I have a 5 gallon tank with single betta fish in it. It has 4 small Java ferns and recently added a new Anubis that was quarentine before I put it in the tank. I have white aquarium sand as substrate with seachem root tabs added in. The filter I use is the one that came with the tank. The tanks is a Top Fin Premium Glass Aquarium. I have Fluval Bio-Foam as a filter along with a bag of Fluval Biomax media. I have an air stone in the side of the tank with the filter to keep that water back there moving. I have a heater that keeps the tank at about 80 degrees. I add seachem Stability and Pristine at every water change. I use seachem prime to mix my new water. I went on vacation the week of June 13th and I pretty sure the person watching my fish over fed him and when I got back my tank was a disaster and my fish looked aweful. With many water changes and the addition of Seachem Stress coat I got him looking better and the tank looking better ( It was covered in algae) The ammonia lever then was close to 8ppm. Once My fish and tank were healthy looking. I kept doing 50% water changes but nothing got rid of the ammonia. I have cleaned and cleaned that tank. I fasted my fish for about 5 days to see if that would help and I got it down to 3ppm. But nothing I do seems to help. I am at my wits end. I don't know what else to do for my fish. I got home yesterday after work and noticed he was starting to get fin rot so I did another water change and started Stresscoat and antibiotics. Is it time for me to take the tank down and start over I dont know where the ammonia is comming from. I dont think its food I feed him piece by piece and watch him eat it. I just dont kno what else to do. I have other plants in quarentine thinking more plants are better but now I am afraid because the fin rot started shortly after i added the Anubis. Please help me if you have any advice!!

I would look closely at the filter, that is what should take care of the ammonia. You didn't say how long this has been running but I'm guessing it's new? 

If so it probably hasn't been cycled. Do NOT clean the filter. 

Any dying plant stuff will create ammonia as will fish and food. 

[Biotope Biologist]

50% water changes daily is also disrupting your bacteria. 5 gallons are actually one of the hardest fish tanks to keep because the volume is so small. It makes for an unstable chemical environment where one small mistake can lead to 2 weeks worth of headache.

 

I would recommend only 30% water changes weekly. Your betta comes from stagnant ponds, they are used to high biological load and can handle it. From there you can find your sweet spot for water changes. Some people including myself change water in my 5 gallon once every 2 weeks. Insects I guess don't produce alot of waste... but by my example I just mean that there is a constant balance that you will have to find on your own. 

 

The other question is are you using test strips or something that looks like this:

The latter being incredibly inaccurate over time.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Biotope Biologist

[Audikashi]

@Wrencher_Scott It has been up since April the 9th 😓

@Biotope Biologist I have been using API test strips. I will start trying the 30% changes!

[Torrey]

On 7/8/2022 at 10:20 AM, Audikashi said:

@Wrencher_Scott It has been up since April the 9th 😓

@Biotope Biologist I have been using API test strips. I will start trying the 30% changes!

May I ask exactly how your filter is set up? Any activated carbon in there?

As someone who has been keeping aquariums for decades, I second Biotope Biologist that 10 gallon and smaller are the hardest to establish and the easiest to disrupt. One seemingly minor fluctuation can take months to get back in balance, because the fluctuation will affct the entire tank pretty quickly.

The sand substrate is fine, it's easy to get roots into and provides a fair amount of surface for beneficial bacteria. A cheat to increase surface area is bury bits of lava rock in the sand, with only a small portion of the lava rock showing above the surface (easy to glue plants to, also!)

More plants will keep ammonia, nitrites and nitrates down. Floating plants with long roots (frogbit, floating some guppy grass or pearlweed, etc) give bettas a "protected hammock" to relax in, and keep their stress level down. The increased amount of plants will also stabilize water quality.

Biggest thing I found to improve my learning curve with small tanks was to keep a spreadsheet.

Here's the spreadsheet format most of the homeschoolers I work with copy, it's basically click on it, tell Google "Make a copy", and then fill in the data on your copy of the spreadsheet. You can insert images, so you have a place to compare data against images, and start to identify trends. Mine is color coded, and yells at me if I get readings outside of establish parameters, because my kiddo thought that would be funny.🧐

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/8/2022 at 4:52 AM, Audikashi said:

I add seachem Stability and Pristine at every water change. I use seachem prime to mix my new water.

Stability: Bacteria in a bottle, only really needed when you first setup a tank, usually about 7-14 days.
Pristine: Not recommended for use
Prime: Water conditioner, removes heavy metals, binds ammonia, etc.

I don't recall if pristine+prime causes issues, but I want to mention that there's a few products sold that contain chemicals that bind ammonia and we've had issues reported before where people were dosing both chemicals and that resulted in essentially dumping a massive amount of seachem prime + seachem prime (with other stuff, labelled differently) and caused issues with the fish.

Seachem's website recommends dosing prime no more than once every 24-36 hours. It works long after it's been added to the water and will continue to work in the aquarium.  When you change your water, you're going to want to add in the water itself to the tank, then dose the entire volume of water of the tank (5G).  If you prefer to dose the water itself, add the water to a bucket, dose the bucket accordingly, and then add that water to the tank. I usually wait 3-5 minutes just for the sake of doing so.  That being said, you don't need to use anything else during normal water changes beyond a typical water conditioner. 

On 7/8/2022 at 4:52 AM, Audikashi said:

The filter I use is the one that came with the tank. The tanks is a Top Fin Premium Glass Aquarium. I have Fluval Bio-Foam as a filter along with a bag of Fluval Biomax media. I have an air stone in the side of the tank with the filter to keep that water back there moving.

It looks like everything is a cartridge based filter, and it sounds like you've modified it to add your own media / foam to the filter.  This is the best way to run it and it sounds like you're doing everything right.

I would recommend starting by verifying that you don't have ammonia leeching off the root tabs, that the ammonia isn't exponentially being added to the water column somehow.  Finding out where the ammonia is coming from is the first problem.

I would also test your tap water to verify the water itself as well as after off-gassing.
1.  Take a sample of water from the tap, test everything you can.
2.  Aerate the water for 24 hours and then retest.
3.  Compare the results of #2 to your tank to get an idea of what's being added to the tank every time you do a water change.

Secondly, if you're main concern is overfeeding, I would suggest you stop feeding the fish for 3-5 days.  This will give the fish a chance to push out anything internally that may be causing discomfort as well as relax a little bit from all of the stress of all the water changes.  If the fish is backed up, and you're trying to feed them, it might cause more damage.  Stopping food is the best way to remove that as a factor.

Third, fin rot, it's a gram negative bacteria and clean water helps, but I would also make sure you have the proper medications on hand in the case you need to treat it with medicine.

[Audikashi]

@Torrey So the filter of the tank I have is basically built into the back of the tank I swapped the disposable carbon filters for the  Fluval bio-foam and I stuffed some Fluval Biomax that comes in the bags back there with it. I stuck an air stone back there because the water in the back didn't really seem to circulate.

@nabokovfan87 the way I mix my water now is I add 0.25mls of Prime to a 2.5 Gal bucket and it sits until I am ready to use it. Which is usually a day or 2. I have a little heater I keep in the jug I am going to use next.

I will be sure to test my water using the method you described!

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/8/2022 at 1:31 PM, Audikashi said:

@nabokovfan87 the way I mix my water now is I add 0.25mls of Prime to a 2.5 Gal bucket and it sits until I am ready to use it. Which is usually a day or 2. I have a little heater I keep in the jug I am going to use next.

Do you aerate the water while it's sitting?

On 7/8/2022 at 1:31 PM, Audikashi said:

I stuck an air stone back there because the water in the back didn't really seem to circulate.

Yeah, they tend to have some pretty cheap pumps. Make sure you're cleaning the impeller on it.

[Audikashi]

@nabokovfan87 I added began aeration this weekend.

I added 7 new plants. I have removed the root tabs. I will be adding a sponge filter when the abx treatment for the fin rot has been completed. I have stopped the Pristine and Stability. Currently all that's going in is Stresscoat and the medication as directed. My ammonia was at 0.5ppm yesterday so fingers crossed! I will also be adding a carbon layer to my filter along with my sponge and the biomax media bag in my filter that came with the tank. Hopefully I am on the right track!

Thank you everyone for all your help! I really appreciate it!🙇‍♀️

 

[nabokovfan87]

You can continue to dose the stability until the ammonia is 0.  This is recommended to get the nitrogen cycle completed as fast as possible.

[Audikashi]

Ok I will continue the Stability until ammonia is 0 and I added my sponge and the new carbon back into by filter since the abx course is complete. His fins don't seem to be getting worse and I think I can even see some new growth. Ammonia was at 0.25ppm all other parameters were good but my pH dropped to 6 would you recommend adding anything like coral? Also do I need to start adding a liquid fertilizer for my plants since they get nutrients from the water column?

Also a side note some of the plants I had in quarantine came with a little bladder snail... what do I do with it? lol

Thank you again for all the help!

[Wrencher_Scott]

On 7/12/2022 at 8:19 AM, Audikashi said:

Ok I will continue the Stability until ammonia is 0 and I added my sponge and the new carbon back into by filter since the abx course is complete. His fins don't seem to be getting worse and I think I can even see some new growth. Ammonia was at 0.25ppm all other parameters were good but my pH dropped to 6 would you recommend adding anything like coral? Also do I need to start adding a liquid fertilizer for my plants since they get nutrients from the water column?

Also a side note some of the plants I had in quarantine came with a little bladder snail... what do I do with it? lol

Thank you again for all the help!

You need coral or something to bring the pH up at least a little, your cycle is very hard to start like that, BB won't grow. Shoot for at least 6.5 pH, coral will bring it to 7 something in time. 

Stability is snake oil.

All you need is de chlore for water from the tap, Prime will do that.

You need higher pH and time to cycle. Normally only change enough water to keep it safe for the fish. The more you change the longer it will take. BUT at this point the fish with the rot needs very clean water to recover so I think I would change water a lot. 

I don't know what you used to medicate for the fin rot but if it's an antibiotic it can kill your good bacteria too. 

If you decide to medicate you really need a hospital tank if you use antibiotics because of the filter, it needs it's BB.

BTW vets only use antibiotics in food and injections, in the water I guess it could soak into the food to help but ya.....

I would just fill that filter with course foam and coral. Coral to raise the pH. I have never had any luck with trusting test strips when checking pH, but API liquid works great. 

With all the water changing you don't need carbon either, the meds will be gone in no time, replace it with foam too. (Or let it be, it will harbor good bacteria in time.) 

Stop dumping all that exspensive useless Seachem crap in there and just give the sick fish clean, chlorine free water. 

I would not do any fertz for the plants yet either, certainly not anything with nitrates. 

That hang in the tank ammonia alert thing is awesome, that worked great for me when I set up my last tank. No need for strips or API tests. Just look at it, can't beat that. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Wrencher_Scott

[Audikashi]

Sorry it has been so long since an update. Kento, by the last dose of the abx, had completely recovered from his fin rot. His fins have now nearly completely grown back. I added 7 new plants to my tank and my tank has been ammonia free for nearly 2 weeks! I do a 30% change once a week to the water. With all the extra plants I started dosing Flourish 2x a week at the recommended dose. Now that since I have added all the extra plants my nitrate level has been 0 even with the Flourish. I have added stem plants. Is it safe to put some root tabs back in or is there something else I should be doing. All other parameters are perfect. A friend recommended I add some shrimp in the tank to increase the nitrate levels, but I took me so long to get my tank balanced I was worried. I have had Kento with shrimp before and he actually did leave them alone so I know they would be fine but I just worry about the water. Any suggestions?

Edited July 26, 2022 by Audikashi
Added a picture!

[Flumpweesel]

Nice to hear a good result. If you enjoy shrimp they could be a good addition to the tank as the are great cleaners and don't produce much waste so won't shock your cycle .

Root tabs go easy and just under the plants that need them (Anubias and Java fern don't need them)

Well done glad all your hard work paid off.

Your plants look healthy so I wouldn't worry too much you could always leave your water changes for longer (monitoring of course) to let the nitrate build naturally and reduce your work load

[Audikashi]

Thanks so much @FlumpweeselA second opinion on adding something new to a tank as always helpful!! I will see if stretching my water changes out will in crease them some!