Poor water quality

Awakune

Junior Poster
Aug 7, 2016
7
0
1
47
Kamloops BC
Hello,


I've been reading the forums for 6 months now and have read all the stickies. I am only 6 months into my aquarium journey and have to date tried to be respectful of the forums preference of helping intermediate fish keeping to advanced. So far I've struggled immensely and really need some solid direction from experienced people to help figure out what I'm clearly missing.


My goal is to have a high tech planted tank(26g) with fish and a low tech planted tank for my betta(10g).


Since the start I have not been able to keep my plants alive. We have a 26g bowfront that we recently ripped down and restarted due to a cyanobacteria outbreak so terrible it wiped out half my fish before I figured out what was causing the sickness. This tank was started in January with 5 plants and my betta. I don't know what kind of plants tbh. They weren't labelled and just bought from Petland. It was a kit that came with Fluval c3 HoB and stock canopy light. When I first began posting regarding the ill plants most people suggested a much better light and some fertilizers. We upgraded our light to Fluval Fresh and Plant 2.0 and bought a pmdd pre-mixed dry fertilizer that you mix with water. Further research has confirmed it is the "original" pmdd mixture. So it has no phosphates added to it. We also upgraded the filter to an aquatop cf400uv. The tank was fully cycled as the reading were 0/0 for ammonia and nitrite for 6 weeks before I stopped testing daily.


I began adding Seachem's excel per the dosing on the back of the bottle and had been adding .65ml per day of the pmdd mixture. Weekly pwc's of 20-25%. We added 4 red cherry shrimp which in retrospect and increased knowledge was probably not the best idea since the tank was still so new. I killed them all at about the 11th day. They had all molted in the past 2 days and I think the dose of excel killed them because all were alive and happy at 10 am and when I checked at 4 pm they were all dead. I could have possibly overdosed the excel but I really don't think so as I'm careful. We did not get anymore fish for a few months and decided to get the betta into a 10g low tech since we realized our knowledge was lacking greatly still. Kept fighting with the plants health and the pmdd seemed to help some. The diatoms stopped, only a tiny bit of green spot algae and a large area of what I now know was cyanobacteria but at the time I thought it was algae. This was only in one spot in the tank and it wasn't spreading so we thought we just had some fine tuning to do. We began to add co2 via citric acid and baking soda diy at 2 bpm. We have a solenoid, pressure regulator, a bubble counter and a drop checker. Some plants were struggling but they weren't flat out dying so I chalked it up to learning curve.


We decided to get 12 white cloud minnows and added them. Things were fine although the cyano wasn't going away and seem to be getting a brighter shade of green. It still wasn't spreading though. After 6 weeks we got 3 (intentions of 6 but didn't want to overwhelm the tank) otos. About 1 week after we added the otos we had the first minnow death. I spoke to my local lfs and she said if everything else was fine and the rest of the fish were fine to chalk it up to a single weak fish. We decided to wait a while before getting more otos. About 2 weeks later the first oto seemed to get really lethargic and about half more of the minnows seemed the same. I couldn't' see anything wrong with any of them day after day I read and read and read what could be wrong but with no visual signs I didn't know what to do. They were just all really lethargic then they died. I started losing fish, 1 oto, 2 minnows, 1 minnow, another oto. Every few days someone died. This was over the course of about 1.5 weeks. Suddenly the cyano broke out EVERYWHERE overnight! I got the rest of the fish out of the tank into quarantine but it was mostly too late:( I had to put them into an uncycled 10g. We took a little of the media from 10g (betta tank) but there wasn't a lot to spare and I think that 1 oto plus the 8 minnows was just too much for the tiny filter and 10g. I was afraid to take any from the 26g because I still didn't know what was causing the deaths at the time and didn't want to move it over with them in the media. The oto died about a week later and I only have 3 minnows left. All the ones that were sick looking in the main tank are now passed. I do daily water changes and I test the ammonia and nitrites but I think they were already pretty ill from the main tank and cyano and the cycle was just too much. I know that BGA doesn't often negatively affect fish but there was nothing else. Everything else has some sort of visual telltale sign that eventually appears but I just couldn't' find anything. After death they looked really ragged and skinny but i swear this look came to them as they died. I couldn't' actually see them losing weight over the couple days it took them to succumb.


We added 2 horned nerite snails for "company" to the betta because he often looks bored and until about a month ago that was a vey stable tank with no algae to complain about. However, about a month ago my betta started having "bad days" where he's lethargic and just ...not quite right. The plants in his tank are dying at a faster and faster pace. I suspect he's getting finrot although it's minor right now if he does. His usually bright orange fins are looking transparent near the ends and I found a tiny hole in one of them. I can see the hornwort needles clearly through his fins at the bottom. His tank has got a "fishy" smell to it. The nerite snails shells are deteriorating. I've tried different veggies and snail jello and algae wafers, nothing is helping. I added 1/2 a cuttlebone to the tank as soon as I noticed the shells but they are still getting worse and not better.


Water quality, water quality, water quality. I am NOT lazy, I trim the plants of dead bits/leaves, I suck the debris off the sand I do 20-25% water changes faithfully weekly. I check the filter (fluval 106 canister) and clean it regularly. I don't know what is wrong and I'm desperate to fix it! My water is clearly not healthy but I don't know why, what to start looking at first or how to fix it. I feel like the plants need more food as both the betta and the 26g plants die the same way... they get a yellow hue to them, brown rotting edges, pin holes, and transparent weak leaves. My gut says they need food but every post I've made on multiple beginner sites have resulted in a resounding "too much fertilizer". This is clearly not the problem because due to that advice I've never increased my dosing. I've just played with the lighting but to no avail. The cyano in the large tank could definitely have been caused by high light low co2 but that does not explain why the plants in the 10g are suddenly dying in exactly the same way nor why I can't keep healthy critters. I also started doing a lot of tests the last few weeks in desperation but I just don't know what I'm looking for. PH, KH, GH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. I've tracked em all for 2 weeks now in the re-started 26g and the betta tank- for comparison. I can answer any questions you think could help you, help me.


Thanks in advanced to anyone who can offer me a place to start figuring out why I can't stop killing things:/
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Awakune

Junior Poster
Aug 7, 2016
7
0
1
47
Kamloops BC
Edit: I should be clear about the plants. I currently have in the 10g bacopa carolina, cryptocoryne usteriana and one plant from the original bunch i couldn't identify. I believe it's some sort of hygrophilia. There is also some hornwort and water lettuce. In the 26g there is bacopa carolina, the unidentified hygrophilia, alternanthera reineckii mini, and baby tears. I only buy plants that are clearly labelled now as I discovered with the first 5 I bought that Petland couldn't' tell me what they were when the problems started and I went back to ask.
 

Pikez

Rotala Killer!
Moderator
May 12, 2013
1,963
1,491
113
Close (but not too close) to LA
Hi Awakune - a couple of notes: short posts with data points will get more people to read it….and pictures. Lots of pictures. It really is true about pics being worth a 1000 words.


Until you post more pics, I am going to suggest you change your maintenance routine to 75% weekly water changes. Manually remove all algae. If you have to add an airstore (use timer) so it comes on at night, that might help. baking soda and citric acid is unsteady and unreliable. Until you are ready for a full blown CO2 system, master growing easy plants without CO2. There are tons of plants that will do OK without CO2. But this becomes really hard to do with too much light. It is a classic newbie mistake to throw too much light at a system and have it come crashing down. Excel is NOT liquid CO2 - it's also not the safest of ingredients.


Big, frequent water changes, cleaning tank, less light, and use of hardy plants that do not need CO2.