Hikari Cichlid Gold Sinking Pellets

[ChiaJesus]

I have been feeding my red terrors Hikari Cichlid Gold sinking pellets. They love them, and when fed floating pellets, they barely touch them.

The tank itself is 125G long and I have a Fluval FX5 and a Rena XP3 hooked up for filtration. The XP3 has Seachem Purigen and carbon. There are no plants (although there was up until a month ago). I religiously do weekly water changes of 40-50%.

Despite all this I'm still having water quality issues. I have red hair algae, blue/green algae, and a neverending case of freaking diatoms. It's really starting to get on my nerves.

The last thing I can think of that could be causing the problem is the food. It's extremely "dusty" when I drop it in the tank. In my head, all that food dust adds up to "uneaten food" and could be the reason why I'm having problems keeping my nitrates under control.

Does anyone else who uses Hikari sinking pellets experience the same thing? Should I just switch to the floating pellets (which doesn't have the same dust problems)?

 

[Nolapete]

You're most likely overfeeding. Feed one time a day. There should be no signs of any food after 5 minutes. If there is, you're feeding too much.

I have some festae that only like floating food, some that only like sinking food, and some that don't care. It's just what they decide they like.

http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm is a link for dealing with algae in planted tanks (which I know you don't have) that still has good information for causes of different types of algae.

I would suggest you order some of Ken's food sticks from kensfish.com. I use the 5 stick blend for most of my cichlids. No dust whatsoever.

 

[excuzzzeme]

I agree with the possibility of overfeeding. I use Hikari Cichlid Gold for all my cichlids and often use sinking as well as floating. I have no issues with the water. You might want to take a look at your lights and photo period.

 

[ChiaJesus]

Thanks for the replies. I don't think it's the lights. I have two canopies with two T8s in each of them, along with two T5 fixtures. The T5 fixtures have been off since I got rid of the plants. I keep the lights on for approximately 12 hours - as I do in my other tanks.

I have been careful not to overfeed them. I only drop a few pellets in at a time, and when they start to lose interest in the food, I stop. Sometimes there might be a pellet or two left but they never last long. I do feed them twice a day, though. I will cut down to one.

The other thing that might be causing the problem is that the tank MIGHT be overstocked. There's 13 juvenile red terrors in there (they are just approaching breeding size now in the 3.5"-5" range). I'm selling six or seven of them this week which will drastically cut down on the bio-load. When a pair finally develops I will sell the remaining fish.

I dunno. This is ticking me off. I'm not a newb...I've never had this many problems with an aquarium.

 

[Nolapete]

13 juvie festae in 125 g is not overstocked. You're either underfiltered, overfed, or lazy on maintenance. 3.5-5" isn't breeding size for festae. Don't expect anything until 6" plus.

 

[Egress]

Do you have algae problems in your other tanks without plants? It's possible that you just have really good water for growing algae. I used to live in Oregon, the water there was quite high in both iron and phosphates, plants and algae grew quite easily. Down here in California, the water I get is very soft and much more pure, I need to add various chemicals now to get the same sort of growth.

 

[ChiaJesus]

13 juvie festae in 125 g is not overstocked. You're either underfiltered, overfed, or lazy on maintenance. 3.5-5" isn't breeding size for festae. Don't expect anything until 6" plus.

The "underfiltered" comment got me thinking. I took apart the FX5 yesterday to clean the impeller and found five or six Seachem Matrix (my bio-filter) chunks lodged in the impeller. I removed them, cleaned it, put it back together and the filter is running better than it ever has. So that was definitely a problem but I don't know if it's THE problem since I have two filters hooked up to this tank.

Do you have algae problems in your other tanks without plants? It's possible that you just have really good water for growing algae. I used to live in Oregon, the water there was quite high in both iron and phosphates, plants and algae grew quite easily. Down here in California, the water I get is very soft and much more pure, I need to add various chemicals now to get the same sort of growth.

Great question. This is the only tank that has been giving me problems and none of my tanks are planted. My phosphates never go above 0.5 but nitrate gets pretty high after a week. I don't know if fixing my filter is going to help but I'm going to give it a few days and see if it makes a difference.