Massive Emergency

M

MJC8719

AC Members
Sep 6, 2004
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Well, this morning when I woke up I noticed the my 29 gallon tank looked a little cloud, but I didn't think enything of it. When I got home today after work, the tank was so cloudy I couldnt see any of the fish. I tested the amnonia levels and the tube turned a dark blue. Immediately I did a 50% water change and will continue doing so until the levels are lower.
My Questions, about four days ago I noticed a little baby fish swimming around. I had no idea that any of my fish were pregnant but one must have been. I never saw that little fish again. I am wondering, if there were more babies that were born, and they all died, would that cause the massive increase in amnonia? I believe the babies cam from a swordtail and platy.

Secondly, I have had my tank for 9 weeks, and it still hasnt cycled. There has been no nitrite spike, and amnonia levels are usuasllya round 1ppm and nitrates anywhere from zero to five. Could this have been cause by the fact that when I first bought my fish, one of them developed a fungal infection and i immediately treated it witha n anti-fungal medicine. Being very new to this, I didnt remove the filter or anything. This was in the first week of owning the tank. Could that have killed any chance of any bacteria developing.

In the tank there is one swordtail, one platy, anda guppy.

Sorry for the long post. All help is appreciated.
 
It seems there are a lot of things that you are assuming could be the cause. first check the filter for dead baby fish. my feeder tank had a goldfish die and get stuck in the filter and that made the tank rather cloudy, and did raise the ammonia. i have used some ich medicine that was "all natural" and it made my 10 a strange green color, but I didn't do a test on it (meds worked good)

Although I can't say what your medicine did, there is nothing you can do to "kill" your chance of bacterial growth, at worst you can start over. Try to get media from an established tank, from the petstore or from a friend.
 
If you've got nitrAtes, your filter is at least partially cycled... you need nitrosomonas to change ammona into nitrites, and nitrobacter to change nitrites into nitrates. If you've got nitrates, you have both types of bacteria, but it sounds like the meds knocked out a good chunk of the population - antifungal/antibacterial meds can do a number on your bio filter, it will take some time to recover.
Cloudiness is common in new tanks - AFAIK it's caused by other types of bacteria and when the filter bacteria become more firmly established these will die off and your water will clear (often suddenly, overnight).
Livebearers are often pregnant, and they'll surprise you with fry quite often. It's likely the little guy you saw was eaten by one of its parents - they do that.
It's a good idea to do daily 50% water changes to keep the ammonia under control, as you said. I'd also feed very sparingly during this time, so you don't overload the tank with waste.
Water changes might or might not help with the cloudiness, but more often than not it clears up on its own so as long as it doesn't seem to affect the fishes' health, I wouldn't worry about it.
 
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