Save my aquarium!

[Gigi]

I'm out of ideas of what to do anymore. I had to move houses last week and the first thing I did was my aquarium. I had a betta with amano shrimp and pygmy corydoras and a Bornéo sucker and 2 ottociclusses. First thing I did was moving my fish to a Tupperware with 20% of my aquarium water and let my oase filter running with it. I kept and ré used all my substrate. I added more benefitial bacteria to be sure. The first thing I noticed was the water was getting cloudy. Then my amano shrimp started to die. Now my water smells and is still cloudy and it realy smells like something rotting. I tested my water everyday and it says my parameters are great! I started doing 50% water changes every day to get rid of the smell and cloudyness but it does not help. My plants are starting to melt. But my parameters still say my water is perfect. I now lost all my amano shrimp and my Bornéo sucker. While those always survived my aquarium changes before. My fish are acting fine though. I tested the water from my new home since it's a different city but it is almost the same as my old home. It's not the first time I moved my aquarium but this cloudy and smell is new to me. The only new thing I added was the Manzanita wood. And while I knew I could get algea covered I don't think this wood would get my water to smell this bad or to cloud it. If anyone have any experience with this I could use all the help I can get before I lose all my fish! 

[meadeam]

I really don't know, but to begin with I would reverse anything that happened just prior to the issue starting.  Have you removed the manzanita? 

[Gigi]

On 10/17/2022 at 7:48 PM, meadeam said:

I really don't know, but to begin with I would reverse anything that happened just prior to the issue starting.  Have you removed the manzanita? 

Not yet. I did remove the wood to smell it but it does not smell like the water. I'll try removing it tomorrow to see if that helps. 

[Flumpweesel]

Describe the smell (pondy, sewery, eggy)

Do a water change and add an airstone, there are many things test don't show my thinking is the bacteria in you're substrate got all mixed up so the anaerobic and aerobic are in the wrong places and dieing back it will sort itself out but the bad gases will be hard on the fishes for little bit.

Clean water will up the O2 and well airstones always help

[nabokovfan87]

Algae definitely has a smell to it.  Vegetal type of thing. 

Here's where we need to start.
 

PLEASE watch that video and let us know how things are looking.

Following the testing, this is how I would solve the issues with the tank.

---->As long as there isn't any fish in the tank, or expected to be, you're fine to do the following:
A.  Take the wood and rocks out of the tank, keep them wet, but take them to a sink or somewhere to rinse them off completely.  Remove any algae with a toothbrush or similar soft bristle brush.

B.  With those items removed, gravel vac the heck out of the gravel, look for dead fish and verify that there isn't a trapped loach rotting somewhere.

C.  Drain out as much water as possible, and then fill the tank with clean, fresh water.  Add the rocks and wood back in.

D.  MAKE SURE you have at least an air stone running in the tank at all time.  You need the water to move around and to have surface movement to help with success here.

E.  If possible, you'd want to go ahead and test daily for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, KH, PH.  Do this for a few days and see how things change over time.  If they remain constant or if you see Ammonia turning into nitrite and then nitrates, that's a good thing.

F.  Verify everything, lighting timer, water conditioner, etc.  Make sure you're doing all the basics right and then you give the tank time. 

G.  When you're comfortable, when it makes sense to do so (the tank is processing ammonia), then you're fine to add the fish back in.  This could be as little as 1-2 days.  The sooner the better in the case that they are in a very small amount of water right now.

Now, let's discuss what's going on here and then talk about what could be normal and when to be concerned.

Cloudiness points towards ammonia and bacterial activity in the water.  This will clear up on it's own and is very normal.  If you want it to clear up sooner, then you'd just do this with daily 50% water changes. 

The smell could be normal or could be a sign of a dead fish.  Check for fish, if not, it's likely very normal.  Loaches and other things can get wedged and stuck into some pretty tight places and be very difficult to find.  It also could be the smell from the food, high nitrates, and other reasons.  If this smell is new and you're not a fan, run some carbon in your filtration where the chemical filtration media would go.

This also could just mean it's time to clean your filter. 

Question, I see you're running CO2 on a pretty bare tank with low demand plants.  Can you elaborate on your setup for the CO2 and what kind it is?

[TOtrees]

Can you add activated carbon to your filter? 

Have you cleaned your filter to be sure the smell isn’t coming from there? 

May I ask, are you running co2? If so, why with few/no plants?

Rotten smell can only be coming from something organic. I would remove the wood. You could replace it with a bunch of fake plants or resin ornaments if you need structure for your tank. 

Re testing: there are lots of things that can be affecting tank health that won’t show up on any normal water test. Also, are you testing ammonia or just the hardness pH nitrate and nitrates and chlorine? “Just” lol. 

[ccurtis]

I see in your post that you said you kept and reused your substrate. Did it dry out prior to reusing it? If so, did you rinse it out good prior to reusing it? If it dried out, and you put it in without rinsing it, you could have some rotting food or a long lost fish in there that has re-surfaced causing the smell.

Another possible option with the wood being new, is if something organic is decaying in the crevices of the wood. If you checked the wood and don't smell it from there, check your anubias you have growing on the wood. You may have root rot on them and that smells pretty bad.

Additionally, based on the tank being cloudy like it is, I agree with the earlier post of perhaps the bacteria was very disturbed and its dyeing and trying to bloom to reestablish itself. I would definitely add an air stone or even a very small nano sponge filter and give it some time. After about a week, if you still have a bad smell do a 30 percent water change and give it some more time. Typically with aquariums, especially ones that have been badly disturbed, they just need time to fix themselves.    

[Gigi]

On 10/18/2022 at 1:09 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

Algae definitely has a smell to it.  Vegetal type of thing. 

Here's where we need to start.
 

PLEASE watch that video and let us know how things are looking.

Following the testing, this is how I would solve the issues with the tank.

---->As long as there isn't any fish in the tank, or expected to be, you're fine to do the following:
A.  Take the wood and rocks out of the tank, keep them wet, but take them to a sink or somewhere to rinse them off completely.  Remove any algae with a toothbrush or similar soft bristle brush.

B.  With those items removed, gravel vac the heck out of the gravel, look for dead fish and verify that there isn't a trapped loach rotting somewhere.

C.  Drain out as much water as possible, and then fill the tank with clean, fresh water.  Add the rocks and wood back in.

D.  MAKE SURE you have at least an air stone running in the tank at all time.  You need the water to move around and to have surface movement to help with success here.

E.  If possible, you'd want to go ahead and test daily for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, KH, PH.  Do this for a few days and see how things change over time.  If they remain constant or if you see Ammonia turning into nitrite and then nitrates, that's a good thing.

F.  Verify everything, lighting timer, water conditioner, etc.  Make sure you're doing all the basics right and then you give the tank time. 

G.  When you're comfortable, when it makes sense to do so (the tank is processing ammonia), then you're fine to add the fish back in.  This could be as little as 1-2 days.  The sooner the better in the case that they are in a very small amount of water right now.

Now, let's discuss what's going on here and then talk about what could be normal and when to be concerned.

Cloudiness points towards ammonia and bacterial activity in the water.  This will clear up on it's own and is very normal.  If you want it to clear up sooner, then you'd just do this with daily 50% water changes. 

The smell could be normal or could be a sign of a dead fish.  Check for fish, if not, it's likely very normal.  Loaches and other things can get wedged and stuck into some pretty tight places and be very difficult to find.  It also could be the smell from the food, high nitrates, and other reasons.  If this smell is new and you're not a fan, run some carbon in your filtration where the chemical filtration media would go.

This also could just mean it's time to clean your filter. 

Question, I see you're running CO2 on a pretty bare tank with low demand plants.  Can you elaborate on your setup for the CO2 and what kind it is?

Hello! First of thank you for the long list of what to do! I use a small co2 bottle of soda stream. Normally I use 1 bubble per second. But I made it a little slower, about a bubble per two seconds. Sadly since I did not have a second tank I have put my fish in and I test daily for parameters. The tests say my water is perfect though, even before I started doing 50% water changes. I also cleaned my filter and have seachem in it so it should take care of dangerous stuff. It took me a while to find the loach but it has been dead for some time as it broke up in my hand. As for the smell it does not smell like algea. It smelled like a bowl of dead fish. But now it is less since I found the dead loach. So I think the smell came from there. I will continue to do 50% water changes untill it begins to clear up. And will check out the video. Thanks again! 

[nabokovfan87]

On 10/18/2022 at 1:37 AM, Gigi said:

I will continue to do 50% water changes untill it begins to clear up.

Running some carbon will help with smells as well.

Glad you found the cause. Keep up the progress and things will do well. Cloudiness, even algae all could've been caused by the ammonia spike which will simply clear up over time.

[Gigi]

On 10/18/2022 at 11:28 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

Running some carbon will help with smells as well.

Glad you found the cause. Keep up the progress and things will do well. Cloudiness, even algae all could've been caused by the ammonia spike which will simply clear up over time.

It now has been about two weeks into my disaster and have learned a lot since then. The cloudiness eventually went away and then out of nowhere my ammonia spiked. So indeed it was a bacterial die off. I did add a bacteria booster the moment I set it back up so I wondered why only then my ammonia spiked and not in the first 2 weeks. I decided I would remove the wood and replace it with a wood I know. Iron wood. In doing so I noticed my annubias was smelling foul. Somebody here mentioned rotting roots of annubias smelled pretty bad too. So I removed it and added 80 euro of plants in there, including 2 fast growing stem plants. I continued doing water changes every day to keep the ammonia down for my fish but it was little to no help and I was worried I would disrupt the cycle if I did that. So I bought seachem prime to put in everyday to make the ammonia less toxic to my fish. I also bought floaters to help. My test kid says ammonia is still high but less then before I added the prime. However my nitrite and ph pretty much did not change since the first day I set it up. Even when I cycled my first tank ever the cycle did not take so long, and I still have my filter with the established bacteria. I decided to let algea grow on my aquarium windows as well to help me but for the rest I don't realy know what to do any more than that. I'm a little reluctant to buy more bacterial boosters, since my ammonia is still high I don't want it to spike again if I add more. Though the cloudiness and smell is gone, here is a new pic of how it is looking now. Any advice on what to do now? 

[JettsPapa]

I'm just now seeing this discussion, but wanted to say that something similar happened to me a year or so ago.  I wanted to move my colony of blue shrimp from a 5 gallon tank to a 10 gallon tank.  I wanted to keep as much of the beneficial bacteria colony as I could, so along with plants and the sponge filter I used the same substrate from the old tank.  Almost every shrimp died in the first few days.  I will never re-use substrate again.

[Gigi]

On 11/1/2022 at 6:37 PM, JettsPapa said:

I'm just now seeing this discussion, but wanted to say that something similar happened to me a year or so ago.  I wanted to move my colony of blue shrimp from a 5 gallon tank to a 10 gallon tank.  I wanted to keep as much of the beneficial bacteria colony as I could, so along with plants and the sponge filter I used the same substrate from the old tank.  Almost every shrimp died in the first few days.  I will never re-use substrate again.

Hey! Glad to know I'm not the only one. I too think ré using the substrate was my first mistake. However at the time I could not afford to go and buy new one. You see I used Ada soil, and here it is very hard to come by. Almost a 2 hour drive to the nearest store that have them. If they even have them in stock. However the soil was only a year old so I figured the nutrients were still there. But a good lesson to learn for my future set ups. Thank you for sharing. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 11/1/2022 at 10:31 AM, Gigi said:

I'm a little reluctant to buy more bacterial boosters, since my ammonia is still high I don't want it to spike again if I add more.

It definitely won't spike ammonia to add bacteria if you add a bacteria booster.  The ammonia feeds the bacteria and allows them to thrive.  You could have a dead fish, overfeeding, or the substrate leeching ammonia and that is causing issues.  High nitrates usually leads to a smell as well as other bad water parameters.  You could also be getting ammonia from the tap showing up due to chloramines in the water.  So check your tap water, make sure you have an airstone if need be, and then go ahead and add your bacteria in there to get it cycled. 

On 11/1/2022 at 10:37 AM, JettsPapa said:

I'm just now seeing this discussion, but wanted to say that something similar happened to me a year or so ago.  I wanted to move my colony of blue shrimp from a 5 gallon tank to a 10 gallon tank.  I wanted to keep as much of the beneficial bacteria colony as I could, so along with plants and the sponge filter I used the same substrate from the old tank.  Almost every shrimp died in the first few days.  I will never re-use substrate again.

Substrate holds a lot of muck. You likely got a lot of waste and food from the substrate and then that got released in the move.  Just make sure you clean it well, like it's a new bag and you clean it until the water is clear.... then you're safer to reuse.  It happens, you live and learn.  Sorry about your losses.

[JettsPapa]

On 11/1/2022 at 4:59 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Substrate holds a lot of muck. You likely got a lot of waste and food from the substrate and then that got released in the move.  Just make sure you clean it well, like it's a new bag and you clean it until the water is clear.... then you're safer to reuse.  It happens, you live and learn.  Sorry about your losses.

Thanks for the advice, but I use either pool filter sand or sandblasting sand in my tanks.  Both are relatively inexpensive, so I will continue to not reuse substrate.

[ccurtis]

Sounds like to me you had anubias with root rot which you pulled out. Did that completely remove the smell? If so, at this point, I'd continue to monitor your water parameters and the tank completely recycle. It needs time. Just try to be patient and let the bacteria do it's thing and you should be up and running again. 

[Gigi]

4 to 5 weeks since disaster. A couple of days after my last post there were no changes in my cycle. My test even said it was deadly high. While the smell and murkyness was gone and my fish seemed fine. I decided to start over with the substrate. It needed a full day but it now has fresh substrate. I added new fresh bacteria from fritz this time. 1 week later my test results were the same as before I changed the substrate. While my filter was well established. I decided to let my aquarium water be tested in my local pet shop. Guess what? My water was perfect! My ammonia test was faulty. While I could have had an ammonia spike from the dead loach and melted plants. It was long gone and even did not need to change the substrate. Oh well you live and learn. While testing the water is a necessary thing. You can't always trust the tests. Now my aquarium is fine again I can finally save up for plants again and thinking about stocking choices... Thank you all for the helpful advice. And if anything can be learned from this is to not ré use substrate, unless you top it off with new. And while testing is good you can't realy rely on them.