Is Hexagon Tank killing my fish?

sawyer1206

sawyer1206

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Jul 22, 2006
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Angleton, Tx.
I have been working on setting up a hexagon tank and am having a trouble keeping fish alive. I believe I have done everything correctly on running the cycle. I ran the tank for 2 weeks doing 50% water changes every 3 days and finished with a 100% water change to flush the tank. I refilled the tank and added "Cycle" to the tank according to the directions on the bottle. I took measurements for the NO2, NH3,NO3,and pH everyday. I keep a chart of the readings and it was consistent with the maturing of the nitrogen cycle. at the end of two weeks I showed 0 ppm of NH3, 0 ppm of NO2 and .25 ppm of NO3. I believe I have bacteria growing.
I waited one more week and added two mollies to the tank. After 2 days both fish were dead. I checked my tank levels and every thing was fine. I chalked it up as bad fish from LSF so I went to a different LFS and got two more mollies. I watched the fish very carefully and they were fine for the first two days. On the third day they were laying on bottom very lethargic so I checked my tank levels again and everything was fine. I added a air pump and stone to the tank thinking they did not have enough Oxygen and it seemed to put a little life back in them, they were swimming around a lot more.
Well 2 days later I woke to find both of them dead. What is going on? Is my hexagon tank killing them? Is my canopy hindering the gas exchange at the surface?

Any information or suggestions I could get would be great!!!!!
 
okay. what size tank?

during the first two weeks, did you add anything like fish food or bottled ammonia? those things will sit in the tank during the cycle and become food for the bactiera that you need to attract and grow. when you don't have fish, there is no need to change the water. you want the ammonia to stay in there. if the bacteria are there, you don't really need to "flush" the tank unless you have a ridiculously high amount of nitrates.

do you use a dechlorinator (if you have water with chlorine in it)? if not, all your bacteria will die from the chlorine.

cycle doesn't do anything. total fake product. forget it.

what were your exact measurements for ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates at the time of the last death?

also, what are the readings for just plain tap water? (not from the tank)
 
What cycle procedure were you doing?

Just having water in there and changing out water isn't cycling your tank. What kind of test kit are you using?
 
It is a 33 Gallon Hexagon tank and the background displaced 5 gallons of water making it 27 gallons.

I did not use a dechlorinator for the first two weeks because I was using this time to flush the tank. I installed lava rock as a background and wanted to get all the dirt and debris out of the water before beginning the cycle.

Here are the tank reading after I introduced Cycle:

Date pH NH3 NO2 NO3
10/1/06 8.0 .25 .25 0
10/2/06 8.0 .50 .50 0
10/4/06 8.0 .25 0 0
10/6/06 8.0 .25 0 0
10/9/06 7.6 .25 .50 5
10/11/06 7.4 .25 1.5 10
10/12/06 8.0 .25 1.0 10
10/15/06 7.4 0 1.0 10
10/19/06 7.4 0 .25 5
10/20/06 8.0 0 .25 0
10/21/06 8.0 0 0 5
10/23/06 8.0 0 0 5

I am using a Master Fresh Water test kit by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc.
I am also using NH3 and Chlorine strips from Jungle to confirm test kit results.

So it is quite possible I do not have any or enough bacteria to support the fish?

When the fish died all tank readings were 0 except for nitrates which were 5 ppm.

hexagon aquarium 008web.JPG
 
While the readings being at zero when the fish died would tend to point away from Ammonia or NitrIte poisoning, it would be a correct thing to say that your biofilter as-is, cannot support much of a bioload.

This would definately be a factor if you were to introduce more than a couple of fish at the time.

A fully cycled, ready for full bioload, tank needs to be able to absorb about 5.0ppm of Ammonia in 24 hours. If you do not add an Ammonia source to the tank during the cyclcing process, your biofilter will never get big enough to support much of a bioload. I suspect the only source of Ammonia in your tank has been from broken down Chloramine left over from water treatment.

Did you clean the tank with anything prior to filling it, or use adhesives of any kind to assemble decorations?

As rbishop said, you MUST use dechlorinator, or the chlorine will do its job and kill off the bacteria in your tank, including the ones that make up the biofilter.

Also, if your water company treats with Chloramine, you need to use a dechlorinator designed to neutralize it. Prime is the cheapest per treated gallon, and it works.

SirWIred
 
sawyer1206 said:
I am using a Master Fresh Water test kit by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc.
I am also using NH3 and Chlorine strips from Jungle to confirm test kit results.

So it is quite possible I do not have any or enough bacteria to support the fish?

When the fish died all tank readings were 0 except for nitrates which were 5 ppm.
Click to expand...

A cheaper solution on Chlorine testing you may want to consider is a swimming pool test kit, or better yet, just buy the bottle of OTO used for testing for chlorine. A bottle will last a good long time, and it's cheaper than strips.

So you had Ammonia = 0, Nitrite = 0, and Nitrate = 5ppm Right?

I don't know how stable the tank was (as in, how long it had been cycled), but that sounds perfectly alright to me. I'll have to go back and re-read your posts after another cup of coffee...


:coffee2:
 
Captndan,

To answer your question I used aquarium safe silicone to attach the lava rock. ( on a side note what is the difference between GE Silicone II and Aquarium silicone other then $10.00 a tube?)

I did not add anything to the tank during the cycling process other then the "Cycle" itself. I am going to let the tank run for another 2 to 3 weeks adding a little bit of food every other day. I will monitor the water as I did before and see if there is any change.

With this tank being a hexagon tank (low surface area) do you think I could have problems with oxygen levels down the road? The tank did not have any cover when I bought it so I made on from Plexi-Glass that covered the whole tank. Would this cover prevent or hinder Oxygen from entering the tank?

PICT0064web.JPG
 
My experience with cycle..it did nothing for the nitrogen cycle.

unless you add live bacteria in with your fish..your fish will be the source of food for bacteria in the nitorgen cycle.

if you add fish food or any other source of ammonia to start the cycle. the standard for a nitrogen cycle is about 4-6 weeks.

if you use Bio-spira(live bacteria) you can add a light fish load immediately..but you still need to monitor the cycle..my recommendations if you choose this method is to monitory the water parameters every 12 hrs.

a reading of 8.0 of NH3(ammonia) is deadly to fish
a cycled tank would read NH3 0
I am a bit confused .

"When the fish died all tank readings were 0 except for nitrates which were 5 ppm."

When were these fish added and when did they die?

on 10-01-06 you show a reading of NH3 8.0
and on 10-23-06 you show a reading of NH3 8.0
I don't see in your chart where NH3 is 0.

I am also curious what was your source of ammonia?

but it's late and I could be missing something. :eek:


btw..air is added to your tank mostly from surface aggitation from the filter. however, hex tanks tend to be deep with a small surface area but I doubt it was your problem.
 
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