Problems in my aquarium

[Jeffrey Co]

I thought of writing here to get ideas from like minded people.  I have an established 55 gallon aquarium (been there for years) and just got started two months ago of cleaning up the aquarium and putting it fish (guppies, swordtails and platys).  My filter is a combined SunSun canister and a sponge filter.  The sponge filter is new as the old sponge filter i used it for my quarantine tank to cycle it. 

The water parameters on my main tank before problems occured are below.

Water Parameters:

• pH    6.5
• Nitrates - 0 ppm
• Hardness  - hard (North California)
• Nitrite 0 ppm
• Ammonia 0 ppm
• KH/Buffer  - ??
• Water Temperature  - 85 degrees

 

I created a separate quarantine tank (10 gallon aquarium) where I put fish that seemed sick (ick).  I used the method suggested by Cory.  Put ick-x, maracyn, paracleanse all together on first day when introducing new fish.  Leave it for five days before putting fish in my main tank.  One day, on my main tank, I saw ich.  Because I saw it on several fish, I panicked that all the fish in the 55 gallon aquarium is going to get ich.  I put the required dose of ich-x (5-6 capfuls) every day and changed the water about 20 percent.  I stopped the canister filter as it may have activated carbon inside.  As a day go by, I worried thinking that turning off the filter may be hurting the quality of the water.  So in a 24 hour period, I would only run the filter for the second half of the 24 hour period.  That way, the water gets cleaned.

 

After a few days, I saw my fish dying and the ones that seemed healthy, no signs of ich are dead the following day.  Some of these are red ear albino guppies, and regular adult guppies, some are big platys, some are the baby frys.   I tested the water and the nitrite level was extremely high.  I was puzzled what happened.  In an emergency mode, I did a 50 percent water change and then applied SeaChem Prime and Stability.  The first (Seachem Prime) to neutralize the effect of the Nitrite and Seachem Stability to introduce beneficial bacteria again.  I am thinking that my beneficial bacteria were killed my Ich-X.  Could this be true?

I have been more aggressive on my quarantine tank (putting in Maracyn, Maracyn Oxy, Paracleansem, Ich-X) in hopes that it will kill whatever bad stuff that's in there.  But their nitrite level is also way up.   More than 5ppm.  Something has gone wrong and I'm left guessing and hoping someone reads this and sees what I did wrong.

Other possibilities are that I fed them a lot, but the sudden spike on Nitrite on all 3 aquariums (main tank plus two new quarantine tanks ) is a head scratcher.  Could Maracyn oxy been the beneficial bacteria killer?  I bought it by mistake thinking it was the same as Maracyn, so I thought why not use it as well.

Water Parameters after fish started dying:

• pH    6.5
• Nitrates - 0 ppm
• Hardness  - hard (North California)
• Nitrite 5 ppm
• Ammonia 0 ppm
• KH/Buffer  - ??
• Water Temperature  - 85 degrees

Thank you in advance.

[Tommy Vercetti]

Why are you running this tank at 85 degrees? 

Most of my tanks are running at 73 to 75 degrees. I have one running at 80 degrees because it has German Blie Rams and Cardinal tetras. 

[Theplatymaster]

@Jeffrey Co

i agree with @Tommy Vercetti

those fish would really prefer lower temperatures.

also definitely raise the PH with some CrushedCoral, livebearers in general are not fans of acidic waters.

[Tommy Vercetti]

If you have nitrites, your tank is not cycled. That may take a couple of weeks for the beneficial bacteria to catch up to the nitrite load that has been introduced to the aquarium. Keep those water changes daily because 5ppm is really high. To high for seachem prime to neutralize.

Edited March 21, 2023 by Tommy Vercetti

[Theplatymaster]

On 3/21/2023 at 6:38 PM, Tommy Vercetti said:

If you have nitrites, your tank is not cycled. That may take a couple of weeks for the beneficial bacteria to catch up to the nitrite load that has been introduced to the aquarium. Keep those water changes daily because 5ppm is really high. To high for seachem prime to neutralize.

oh, yeah, that could do it.

@Jeffrey Co if you have one, i suggest going to your LFS and asking if they sell established media or gravel to get bacteria.

You could also use a liquid product like Fritz Zyme 7.

A plant in rockwool could also get bacteria, rockwool is a great bacteria area.

you can add this bacteria to your tank in many ways.

[Jeffrey Co]

On 3/21/2023 at 3:43 PM, Theplatymaster said:

oh, yeah, that could do it.

@Jeffrey Co if you have one, i suggest going to your LFS and asking if they sell established media or gravel to get bacteria.

You could also use a liquid product like Fritz Zyme 7.

A plant in rockwool could also get bacteria, rockwool is a great bacteria area.

you can add this bacteria to your tank in many ways.

 

On 3/21/2023 at 3:32 PM, Tommy Vercetti said:

Why are you running this tank at 85 degrees? 

Most of my tanks are running at 73 to 75 degrees. I have one running at 80 degrees because it has German Blie Rams and Cardinal tetras. 

I ran it at 85 to speed up the ICH process.  Once the Ich is completely gone, I bring the temperature back to 78 degrees.

On 3/21/2023 at 3:38 PM, Tommy Vercetti said:

If you have nitrites, your tank is not cycled. That may take a couple of weeks for the beneficial bacteria to catch up to the nitrite load that has been introduced to the aquarium. Keep those water changes daily because 5ppm is really high. To high for seachem prime to neutralize.

But the nitrites prior to me adding the medication were all zero.  It's been zero (good numbers) for years.  It was after using the medications that I suddenly saw the Nitries spike up.   Is that possible?  I am thinking the medication killed the beneficial bacteria.

[Theplatymaster]

On 3/21/2023 at 6:55 PM, Jeffrey Co said:

But the nitrites prior to me adding the medication were all zero.  It's been zero (good numbers) for years.  It was after using the medications that I suddenly saw the Nitries spike up.   Is that possible?  I am thinking the medication killed the beneficial bacteria.

completely possible. some meds can kill bacteria, i suggest getting some more going.

[Jeffrey Co]

On 3/21/2023 at 3:36 PM, Theplatymaster said:

@Jeffrey Co

i agree with @Tommy Vercetti

those fish would really prefer lower temperatures.

also definitely raise the PH with some CrushedCoral, livebearers in general are not fans of acidic waters.

Thank you for this tip.  

On 3/21/2023 at 4:03 PM, Theplatymaster said:

completely possible. some meds can kill bacteria, i suggest getting some more going.

I have ordered Dr Tim's One and Only and have been putting Seachem Stability along with the 50 percent change in water daily to get the Nitrite down.  I really hope things would normalize soon.  It's so sad seeing fish die so quickly.

[Theplatymaster]

On 3/21/2023 at 7:03 PM, Jeffrey Co said:

I have ordered Dr Tim's One and Only and have been putting Seachem Stability along with the 50 percent change in water daily to get the Nitrite down.  I really hope things would normalize soon.  It's so sad seeing fish die so quickly.

the effectiveness of liquid bacteria prodcuts is a disscussion for another thread.

I am just of the opinion that getting the bacteria active, from a cycled tank, is better then getting it dormant from a bottle.

Also low PH is probably caused by all the water changes, if your source water is acidic, also aerated water slowly becomes more alkaline, so lots of water changes can change that.

[jwcarlson]

@Jeffrey Co what are you using to test your water?  I'd question your 6.5 pH if your water is hard.  My water looks like 6.5 pH on the Co-Op strips... but it isn't.

That said, I don't think that matters much at the moment.  I'd keep up with the water changes, you can fish-in cycle doing what you are doing with Stability, Prime, and water changes.  

If I'm reading the initial post correctly... you've had this tank set up for a year, but you're just now starting to do maintenance on it?  Is that correct?  If so, you could be stirring up a lot of detritus causing spikes in water parameters.  What's your substrate?  

Additionally, if you have misdiagnosed what's infected your fish and it is not actually Ich, you can be causing additional issues with the high temperature.  Mainly, there are some bacterial infections that look almost identical to ich, but are actually something else.  Epistylis, in particular.  Do you have any pictures of the tank or the fish or both?  Sometimes that can help a lot.

If you're doing large, frequent water changes it can be helpful to check if you need to age your water.  Basically, take a jar and fill it up with what you would normally put in your tank.  Take a pH reading.  Then "age" that water with an air stone or even just an airline down at the bottom overnight or all day... or 24 hours.  Whatever works for your schedule.  Take the pH reading again.  As an example, mine goes from 7 pH out of the tap to 8.2-8.3 pH after aging it.  This is (apparently) because of trapped carbon dioxide (or perhaps carbonic acid that the utlity adds?).  In any event, the mechanism is unimportant.  I don't worry about aging water if I'm topping off.  But for big changes, you want that stable.  Otherwise, you might be swinging pH pretty significantly at every water change which can be extremely stressful... especially in addition to whatever they're already dealing with.

I'd also probably lay off all of the meds, or at least most of them.  If you've got something that looks like ich, but isn't responding to 85 degrees AND Ich-X, then you probably do not have ich and was feeding Kanaplex in food to treat the epistylus.

Here's a thread of my struggle with epistylus awhile back:

 

Within that thread I also stumbled upon having a pH shift issue with my tap water, though I didn't know it exactly at the time.  I was noticing worse issues after water changes and so I started preheating and aerating water so that I could not use a mix of cold and hot water as the hot water goes through my "softener".  Once I started aging a 5 gallon bucket, I was doing two 50% water changes a day for awhile and everything squared away once I figured out it wasn't ich.

Edited March 22, 2023 by jwcarlson

[Jeffrey Co]

On 3/22/2023 at 5:22 AM, jwcarlson said:

@Jeffrey Co what are you using to test your water?  I'd question your 6.5 pH if your water is hard.  My water looks like 6.5 pH on the Co-Op strips... but it isn't.

That said, I don't think that matters much at the moment.  I'd keep up with the water changes, you can fish-in cycle doing what you are doing with Stability, Prime, and water changes.  

If I'm reading the initial post correctly... you've had this tank set up for a year, but you're just now starting to do maintenance on it?  Is that correct?  If so, you could be stirring up a lot of detritus causing spikes in water parameters.  What's your substrate?  

Additionally, if you have misdiagnosed what's infected your fish and it is not actually Ich, you can be causing additional issues with the high temperature.  Mainly, there are some bacterial infections that look almost identical to ich, but are actually something else.  Epistylis, in particular.  Do you have any pictures of the tank or the fish or both?  Sometimes that can help a lot.

If you're doing large, frequent water changes it can be helpful to check if you need to age your water.  Basically, take a jar and fill it up with what you would normally put in your tank.  Take a pH reading.  Then "age" that water with an air stone or even just an airline down at the bottom overnight or all day... or 24 hours.  Whatever works for your schedule.  Take the pH reading again.  As an example, mine goes from 7 pH out of the tap to 8.2-8.3 pH after aging it.  This is (apparently) because of trapped carbon dioxide (or perhaps carbonic acid that the utlity adds?).  In any event, the mechanism is unimportant.  I don't worry about aging water if I'm topping off.  But for big changes, you want that stable.  Otherwise, you might be swinging pH pretty significantly at every water change which can be extremely stressful... especially in addition to whatever they're already dealing with.

I'd also probably lay off all of the meds, or at least most of them.  If you've got something that looks like ich, but isn't responding to 85 degrees AND Ich-X, then you probably do not have ich and was feeding Kanaplex in food to treat the epistylus.

Here's a thread of my struggle with epistylus awhile back:

 

Within that thread I also stumbled upon having a pH shift issue with my tap water, though I didn't know it exactly at the time.  I was noticing worse issues after water changes and so I started preheating and aerating water so that I could not use a mix of cold and hot water as the hot water goes through my "softener".  Once I started aging a 5 gallon bucket, I was doing two 50% water changes a day for awhile and everything squared away once I figured out it wasn't ich.

First of all, thank you for your thoughtful response.  I am truly amazed on so many people giving a lengthy and detailed response.  That takes so much of people's time and I appreciate it very much.  I did a test of the PH of my water right from the tap water.  It reads between 6.8 to 6.9.  I use API Master test kit.  At the aquarium, the PH is pretty much the same.  

Today my nitrite level has gone back to zero.  My nitrate is zero (well the color should be yellow when zero for the test but the color for me coming out of my API test is clear, not even yellow).  I personally think that's better but not 100 percent sure.  It just seemed to me that the medications messed up my filtration.    My emergency measures so water changes and seachem stability hopefully got it back squared away.  However, I am monitoring daily in case anything spikes up.  

[jwcarlson]

When you're doing the API nitrate test it's extremely important to follow the instructions perfectly.  And to be clear... it's an absolute pain in the rear-end to do the test.  It takes FOREVER.  So... make sure you review the instructions and are confident you're doing it correctly.  The other wildcard can be the age of the kit or perhaps how long it's been "open".  I very rarely use my API kit, mainly because of how big of pain all of the tests are.  So mine is about a year old and has been open/used a handful of times about a year ago and then only once very few months or so since.  

0 nitrates is... possible... with all of your water changes.  But it's not really possible to have gone from 5 PPM nitrite to 0 nitrate without a lot of water changing between... if that make sense.  

Best of luck!

[Jeffrey Co]

On 3/22/2023 at 9:53 AM, jwcarlson said:

When you're doing the API nitrate test it's extremely important to follow the instructions perfectly.  And to be clear... it's an absolute pain in the rear-end to do the test.  It takes FOREVER.  So... make sure you review the instructions and are confident you're doing it correctly.  The other wildcard can be the age of the kit or perhaps how long it's been "open".  I very rarely use my API kit, mainly because of how big of pain all of the tests are.  So mine is about a year old and has been open/used a handful of times about a year ago and then only once very few months or so since.  

0 nitrates is... possible... with all of your water changes.  But it's not really possible to have gone from 5 PPM nitrite to 0 nitrate without a lot of water changing between... if that make sense.  

Best of luck!

I feel so dumb not reading the instructions fully.  But you helped a lot with this.  My nitrate reading is now 20ppm while Nitrite is 0.  20ppm super high???  When I see that, it makes me want to do an immediate water change.  My PH has gone up to 7.8.  Not sure what's going on there (I've been putting seachem stability (half the dosage as instructed daily) and also added Tim's One and only Nitrifying bacteria.   Today my ammonia went up by a little (.25 from 0).  I hope that's manageable.  Am doing daily tests and recording it.   I have a feeling that things are stabilizing.  I lost one fish yesterday and that likely is the last one from the spike in Nitrite last week.  Am also lessening the feeding.  

BTW, I use the API Master Test Kit.  Fairly new.  Once again, a huge thank you and to everyone in this forum.

[jwcarlson]

20 PPM is absolutely fine!  Good if you have plants and you might even want it a little higher with plants.  0.25 ammonia isn't a huge deal, you can also get "false" ammonia if you're using Prime.  I don't know all the specifics there.  I personally wouldn't worry about pH other than is it stable... I think that's something that's FAR too examined for the average fishkeeper.  Unless you're breeding or something, pH isn't particularly important outside of very specific instances (like very low pH which won't allow your aquarium to cycle because the bacteria cannot grow at that pH).

Edited March 24, 2023 by jwcarlson

[Jeffrey Co]

On 3/24/2023 at 9:10 AM, jwcarlson said:

20 PPM is absolutely fine!  Good if you have plants and you might even want it a little higher with plants.  0.25 ammonia isn't a huge deal, you can also get "false" ammonia if you're using Prime.  I don't know all the specifics there.  I personally wouldn't worry about pH other than is it stable... I think that's something that's FAR too examined for the average fishkeeper.  Unless you're breeding or something, pH isn't particularly important outside of very specific instances (like very low pH which won't allow your aquarium to cycle because the bacteria cannot grow at that pH).

So no need to do water change at 20PPM?  I thought Nitrates are bad for fish.  I do have plants but they are still growing.  Slowly converting from artificial plants to natural plants.  Fertilizers are safe for the fish I hope.  I use Flourish as fertilizers.  I stopped it for the time being since the Nitrite spike.

[jwcarlson]

On 3/24/2023 at 1:15 PM, Jeffrey Co said:

So no need to do water change at 20PPM?  I thought Nitrates are bad for fish.  I do have plants but they are still growing.  Slowly converting from artificial plants to natural plants.  Fertilizers are safe for the fish I hope.  I use Flourish as fertilizers.  I stopped it for the time being since the Nitrite spike.

High levels of nitrates are bad, but they're far less of an issue than ammonia and nitrites are.  Nitrates safe under 40 PPM almost universally so far as I know.  I tend to have mine under 20 and basically zero in some tanks (like my discus tank).  But plants suffer because of that.  So I shoot for 25-40 or so in my heavily planted tanks.  And I use fertilizer to keep them that high.  Flourish should be safe.  I use Easy Green.  Stopping until you get things stabilized is a good idea.