My 55 Gal Tank of Nightmares (ToN)

[Vicki]

Honestly, I should have started this a month ago, but I don’t think I even knew about this option then. For now, I’m going to try to remember what all has happened in my journey to try and get this tank up and running - but it’s been a personal nightmare. Every little thing has gone wrong - nothing has gone smoothly. Ugh!

Just so I don’t forget the present, I’ll write in “then” and “now’s” 

Now:  So, day before yesterday I went to a LFS and bought a ton of new plants and a few fish (5 Cory cats, 8 mollys, a clown pleco, and a super pretty female Betta I named Fancy). Overnight, 3 of the mollys died in my Q tank, so back to the store THEY went. (That exchange was a nightmare in and of itself.) Anyway, after doing some RR with the plants overnight, they got planted in the tank, the filters were changed, rock was vacuumed, water was changed and treated and now everyone is in the tank. I was having a problem with Ammonia and couldn’t figure out why, or what to do about it, when the Fritz7 stuff that I’d ordered from amazon came in. And as I was putting it away, I happened to notice (thank you Jesus!) that it said it helped take care of Ammonia! So BAM - ONE Bottle, into the tank. And I’ll dump every bottle into that tank if I need to, to take care of that Ammonia!  The fish were all more active yesterday and not super active today. I’m hoping that they start feeling better and that they’re not permanently damaged. I guess we’ll see.

Then: I found this tank on Craigs List. It was a STEAL! A practically new tank, cover, light, filter and wood cabinet stand for $150! Why wasn’t it gone yet?! Of course I wanted it! DUH! I drive out there, get it in my car and get it home. I paint the cabinet brown (did a crappy job, just so everyone knows!) and we move it into the living room.) I want to use part sand and part rock as my substrate, but the guy at the LFS talks me into using the live bacteria rock substrate under what I have that I’m planning to use. Only problem is, the only color it comes in is black. BUT, he says, what I’ve got will cover it so it won’t be seen. That’s fine, then, try it. My naïveté is showing so clearly, I might as well have been wearing a neon sigh above my head that said, “Whoop Whoop! HEY! I’ll buy whatever you say I should buy! Just give me whatever BS reason you think I should hear and I’ll take it! That’s how stupid I am!!” I buy the black rock (Mistake #1), take it home, rinse the sand perfectly, forget to wash the old rock from my aquarium (Mistake #2), get excited about putting all the substrate down and FORGET TO PUT THE BLACK ROCK DOWN FIRST (probably counts as mistake 3-42, but I’ll just say 3), so I try to pick up the rock and sand, fail at everything, and in the sand, it ends up looking like I made chocolate chip cookie substrate. The rocks are four inches thick in some areas. I finally get irritated. Trying to separate everything and make it look good, so I take a big stick and just mix it all up. Interestingly, it ends up looking really good. It just took me three-four days to get there. Who knew? 

That’s it for today. As usual, my head is killing me. Today is day three of this particular headache, and it’s looking like a possible hospital visit and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m loving rocking in my chair and watching my fish - I can’t do that in the ER. Oh well. We live with what we’re given. 

Edit to add:  My migraines are a chronic, disabling condition of mine. I have them every day, without fail, and have learned to live with them - like many many people have learned to live with a *multitude* of other disabling conditions. For the most part, my headaches are fairly stable and I’m able to live with them. Occasionally, though, I’ll have one that becomes severe and I’m not able to treat it at home with my home medications and it requires either an ER visit or a visit and a multi-day admission. The reason I would find it a problem worth mentioning is when I have something about my tank that seems unstable, AND I’m having one of those headaches that seem to be trending in the hospital direction. Mostly I really need help. If I have this da..rn unstable tank and end up in the hospital for 4-5 days, what am I going to do? Does anyone have any ideas? SO! Haha! That’s probably more information than you (or anyone) wanted to know about my health - I just don’t want anyone to ever think that I’m looking for sympathy.

I decided to share a little bit more “About Me” in a post below. 

Edited August 13, 2023 by Vicki
Additional information.

[Vicki]

Forgot to add a picture of Fancy, my Betta. Important things are important. 😉

Edited August 10, 2023 by Vicki

[Rube_Goldfish]

I'm sorry to hear you've had so much hassle, and I'm even more sorry to hear about health troubles, but the tank looks great! The substrate may not be quite what you envisioned but I think it looks really natural, and you can always change substrate down the line if you end up not liking it.

It sounds like the Fritz7 stuff is dechlorinator? I'm sorry if I'm telling you things you already know, but did you cycle the tank/filter at all? If not, a dechlorinator will bind ammonia and buy you time, but follow the directions on the bottle, since it is possible to overdose that stuff.

Now that it's the next day, what does your ammonia test say? How do the fish look?

[Vicki]

On 8/11/2023 at 8:38 AM, Rube_Goldfish said:

I'm sorry to hear you've had so much hassle, and I'm even more sorry to hear about health troubles, but the tank looks great! The substrate may not be quite what you envisioned but I think it looks really natural, and you can always change substrate down the line if you end up not liking it.

It sounds like the Fritz7 stuff is dechlorinator? I'm sorry if I'm telling you things you already know, but did you cycle the tank/filter at all? If not, a dechlorinator will bind ammonia and buy you time, but follow the directions on the bottle, since it is possible to overdose that stuff.

Now that it's the next day, what does your ammonia test say? How do the fish look?

🙂 Thanks for the reply! It’s nice having someone to bounce ideas off of sometimes. After having things go so easy with my 20 gal Tetra tank, having everything go so wrong with my 55Gal Tank of Nightmares (ToN) has been a … challenge. It’s turned out that I’m OK with the substrate. I’m a little concerned with the sandy layer under the pebbles. I have an inkling of an idea from somewhere that some kind of gas builds up over time in sand that needs to be released with raking? I’m not super sure about it because half of my 20 gal is sand and I’ve never raked it and nothing has exploded or died, so…. But, this is the ToN, so with my luck, I’ll wake up one morning to find all my fish dead and 50 gal of water, rocks, sand and plants on my floor.

And (I’m editing my OP to say this) my migraines are a chronic, disabling condition of mine. I have them every day, without fail, and have learned to live with them - like many many people have learned to live with a *multitude* of other disabling conditions. For the most part, my headaches are fairly stable and I’m able to live with them. Occasionally, though, I’ll have one that becomes severe and I’m not able to treat it at home with my home medications and it requires either an ER visit or a visit and a multi-day admission. The reason I would find it a problem worth mentioning is when I have something about my tank that seems unstable, AND I’m having one of those headaches that seem to be trending in the hospital direction. Mostly I really need help. If I have this da..rn unstable tank and end up in the hospital for 4-5 days, what am I going to do? Does anyone have any ideas? SO! Haha! That’s probably more information than you (or anyone) wanted to know about my health - I just don’t want anyone to ever think that I’m looking for sympathy.

NOW, FritzZyme7! This is easiest described by pulling this quote from their website:

“FritzZyme® 7 contains live freshwater-specific strains of live nitrifying bacteria proven to reduce fish loss due to toxic levels of ammonia and nitrite. Nitrifying bacteria can take weeks to naturally establish colonies in new aquariums while ammonia and nitrite can reach lethal levels in only a few days. FritzZyme® 7 provides the proper balance of bacteria proven to rapidly seed biofilters, greatly reducing the natural cycle time allowing for safe, faster addition of livestock.                                   FritzZyme® 7 may be added to new tanks or established systems any time the biofilter needs fortification including: after water changes, aggressive cleaning, adding new livestock, medicating or changing filter media.” 

So, not a dechlorinator. I’ve dechlorinated already, and yes, I cycled the tank and filter for close to six weeks already. I finally got Nitrites down to 0, and my nitrates up to 10-20ppm, and my ammonia was down to .25, or less - it really was lighter than the .25 - I’d have called it .15 or trace, tbh. So I decided to buy a few fish. <eyeroll> overnight ammonia and nitrites spiked. It would seem that my tank is capable of handling 5 Cory Kittens (they’re baby Cory Cats) and a molly fish. So that’s all it’s getting for right now the darling little kittens are quickly becoming my favorites and are letting the molly play with them. The six fish I have in there really seem happy.  I have a clown pleco in there, but I haven’t seen it since yesterday morning, so I have no idea if it’s still living or not - but hey, big tank, one tiny little fish. It could be days before I know. 

Anyway, I guess my response to you has been my journal for today. I need to scrape the brown algae off the back and pull some of my new dying plants out before they make a mess, and tomorrow I clean my filters. Again. It’s getting old. On the upside, I’m down to about every other day. For several weeks it was twice a day. Those days were exhausting!

[Vicki]

Throwing this link in here just for my reference:

Quote

Thread on nitrite spike :) - lots of good information here!