Algae, weeds and other problems.

Hunter555

Hunter555

Ninja!
Sep 19, 2004
79
0
0
45
Sydney
Hi people,

First an introduction. My name is Hunter and I'm pretty keen on getting into this aquarium stuff but I'm not too experienced. I have a 3 foot tank (not sure on water capacity) with the following fish:
* 2x Blue Dwarf Gourami
* 3x Orange/Sunset Gourami
* 4x Neon Tetra
* 2x Black Ghost Knife Fish
* 2x Guppies
* 2x Khuli loach
* 4x Peppered Catfish
* 4x Platies
I've been running this tank for about 6 months now and everything has been great up until the last month.
PH for the first time a few days a go was too low (just below 6 I think) so I upped it a bit.
Ammonia is 0, nitrate is just above 0 (almost negligable).
I have algae growing real bad, most of the plants are hairy from this and two have died completely. Many of the other plants look very sick.
The water has recently gone a cloudy white colour when before it has been crystal clear.

Another problem is that every morning I wake up now they have started tearing their weeds to bits and the whole gravel is covered in little bits of weed that someone has been ripping off. They never used to do this.

Another problem is that I originally had 7 neons! Two nights ago 2 skeletons turned up on the bottom of the tank over night. Is this the ghost knife fish? I suspect it is, because I saw one of them chomping on the remains of one skeleton in the day. I feed them blood worms every two days which has been fine up until now, why are they going nuts now?

One of the orange gouramis has died too, he just sat on his side on the bottom for a week and got bits of black stuff on his fins and then died, two other gouramis have started to freak out and sit on the bottom all day on a funny angle and now I'm worried for them.

I know I have many problems all of a sudden but I hope you can help my poor little fishies. I like them a lot and this is freaking me out.
They have been fine up until now.

Thanks,
Hunter.
 
I also meant to ask you about their weird habbits:

I drop catfish pellots into the tank every morning and the peppered catfish don't go near them. In fact they swim away from them. They do however LOVE blood worms?! The ghost knife fish who we feed blood worms to, only eat a few bloodworms but go crazy over the catfish pellots! Isn't this the wrong way around? My fish must be insane! :confused:
 
Okay so no-one replied to my original post, so I'm going to try buying 2x bristle nose catfish, a small (fake) log for them to hide in, a heap more weeds, chuck out a lot of the algae infested weed, do a 50% water replace (with sucking up all the left over plant bits) and put in a bit more food under the pebbles for the weed. I'm also going to try treating the water with some more bacteria.

Am I on the right track?
 
Hmmm, there's a lot to reply to here...

Okay, first thing, get the full dimensions of your tank. I'm pretty sure you're on the order of 30g, so for now, that'll be my assumption.

You've got a lot of fish in that tank. There's problem number 1, you're overstocked.

Number 2, what did you use to boost pH? If you used a comertial pH up with buffer, you likely added a lot of PO4 to your tank.

Third, but perhaps most importantly, how often and how much (roughly as a % of tank volume) do you change water? I would recommend increasing whatever you're doing to at least 50% weekly. This should solve your pH woes and help with your stocking.

Fourth, NO3 is just above 0? Do you mean NO2? NO3 should be well within measurable range if your tank is cycled.

Most fish will eat dead fish. I suspect that the tetras died first, neons are pretty fragile, then the others ate the bodies. I doubt it was a killing.

What type of plant do you have? I have heard of gouramies tearing at plants. How much light do you provide? Do you supplement them with any fertilizers?

The cloudy white water is a bacterial bloom. It basically indicates that something in your tank is out of whack and that your tank is no longer at equilibrium. Give it some time and it will settle out, the bacteria won't hurt your fish.

Right now, water changes, and lots of 'em. Get the sick fish out of the tank and into a hospital tank if you can.
 
Didn't have time last night to type my list of questions, Happy hit most of them (Thanks ). The one that I wonder about is what are you adding to the water on a regular basis and what have you added resently. the cloudy water could be a reaction to PH powders. Either way start doing some water changes, and then let us know the answers to the questions above
 
Thanks for the replies!

I've measured up the tank and I estimate it to be around 120 liters which is about 30 g. I added a commercial PH up you are correct. I only added a small ammount because I didn't want to upset them too much. The Ph seems to be normal after a water change.

I did a 60% water change last night and sucked up a lot of junk off the bottom too. The water has since settled a bit and is almost back to clear.
Normally I only do about 20% change about once a week. I did a 60% water change 4 days ago too.

When I got home from work yesterday I found that we now have only 1 neon left and my biggest gourami was dead too. :-( He used to always attack my hand when I was feeding the knife fish too. The knife fish seem to be lying on their side a bit too much too but maybe I'm just paranoid, they have always done that a bit during the day.

Stuff I put in the water:
When I put new water in I always put water ager in, let it sit for an hour or so, then put nitravec. I've been putting a little bit of nitravec in every week (2 - 3 ml) but I'm going to have to increase that now because I've just started putting a anti fungal/anti-bacteria treatment in which will upset the balance in the tank. I also have a bit of aqaurium salt in there which I only top up according to how much water I have drained, not how much has evaporated.

The fish that have died have lost all their colour (gone white) and have little white growths on them (especially eyes). There are a few with these growths left. Do you know what this is and if that is what is killing them? You were right about the dead neons and the black ghosts, they were only eating them because they were dead. They are so well fed from eating dead neons now that they haven't touched the last 3 that died.

I don't quite understand why this has happened so suddenly. The tank has been running perfectly for 6 months up until now without a single casualty. :-(

Any more suggestions based on the extra info?

Once again, thanks for your help.
 
I should also mention that although it seems that the biomass is too big for this tank I think it's not too bad. Appart from the black ghost knife fish, the biggest is only about an inch and a half long. The black ghosts are about 5 inches long but that is mostly fin without much body mass.

Feeding habbits:
Up until now we had been feeding them a very small amount of flake food twice a day with catfish pellots for the peppered catfish and blood worms every second day for the ghost knife fish. I have since decreased that to a small amount of flake food once a day only and I've been leaving the light off all day while I'm at work to try to stop the algae.
 
The water seems to be totally clear now and stable. Last water change I did was over a day ago.

Results from a test just now:
Ph: 7.0
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite(NO2): 0.25 ppm

I have also added a post in the tank section for my tank. It might give you more info if you need it:


Please help my poor little fishies get better. One of the khuli loaches just died and the other fishies look very sick. They have white spots on their eyes and one has a white spot on it's feeler.

What do I do now? :bowing:

My Tank
 
Last edited:
Here is one of the sick gourami's:

littlebattler.JPG


and here is the algae:

algae.JPG


Sorry about the quality of the pics, I have no idea how to get quality when it comes to photos of aquariums.
 
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