Africans dropping like flies...

As long as the new water is good (free of toxins, etc.) it's hard to imagine any negative affects of frequent water changes. Assuming similarity between tank water and tap water, the more changes, the better.

I would also be wondering about contaninants in the water supply or maybe something toxic made its way into the tank. Adding carbon to filters is always a good move if you suspect something toxic got into the tank.

Good luck,
Jim
 
Frequent water changes don't kill fish. They make them healthier and grow faster, if they did kill fish, most of the discus in the world would be deader than a door nail. What does concern me is the salt water softner, why are you even using it? Especially with an african rift lake tank. That type of water softner isn't intended for use with aquariums. I have said this a 100 times before, leave your water alone unless your using RO. Adding/using chemicals to alter the water is asking for problems, and makes it unstable.

Check the water temp, check the heater. Though I do agree that it sounds like something got dumped into the tank at toxic levels. Also what is the gH and kH of the tank?
 
Heh. I don't really have a way around the softener. It's not for the aquariums, it's just on the main water supply line from the well. Makes showers suck a lot less. Not to mention cleaner dishes and clothes. :) Either way it doesn't affect the TDS of the water, so the africans still like it. :) I haven't lost any more since that happened. I dunno what it was. The ones that are still alive are healthy as ever and growing like the proverbial weed! I've never seen fish grow this fast!

GH is 0 and KH is around 11. pH is 8.2. 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, nitrates kept below 10. I can go get a sample from before the softener and take the GH of that to give a better idea of TDS.
 
hrmm...

Anyone else around? That is ... kids ... that could've put something (poisonous,etc) in the tank? happens.... :dog:
 
Yeah I would, your gH especially in african rift lake tanks should be much higher than that, should be 8-12 in my opinion. You can achieve this by adding some baking soda and epsom salt to the tank though.
 
50% every other day? Man, your water bill might be larger than mine!
 
KH is OK, so I wouldn't bother with baking soda. GH is rather low, and epsom salts are a cheap and effective way to increase them. I'd start by adding a tablespoon of epsom salts per twenty gallons of water (do this gradually, not all at once!) and see what that does to GH. You might need a bit more.

HTH,
Jim
 
I still think 50% every other day is overkill unless your keeping Discus.

Whatever it was, the laying on the bottom and breathing really fast is a clear indicator that it was stress-related. Whether its a lack of oxygen, some sort of chemical that stressed them, a sudden temp change, or even a sudden pH change.


:thud:
 
50% every other day isn't "overkill". Its just ensuring that the water is gonna be nice and clean. Even with discus you don't "HAVE" to do it. Only reason we do daily changes with discus is to get them to grow fast, and keep the water super clean which helps them grow fast. You can keep discus in a tank that only gets weeklys, but its not gonna have as nice of a shape or be as large as an adult that was raised with frequent changes. Doing a change 2-3 times a week isn't that much work, takes me 10mins to do one of my 55 gallons each day, and thats with wiping the tank walls down, and cleaning filter pads. When it comes down to it, the more fresh water you give fish, the healthier they are gonna be. Whatever happend to the fish in this instance wasn't water quality related. Lack of O2 in a tank will have the fish gasping at the surface, so it wasn't that. Sudden temp change? Please, many fish require rapid temp changes to induce spawning, a 5-8 degrees isn't uncommon to induce this. Discus can handle it and more, as well as many many others. So unless the temp drop was 12-20 degrees, its not gonna bother them too much. The kH in the tank is high, means super stable water going into it, that translates into a near impossibility to have a rapid pH change, even in that case, most of the time they hang at the surface gasping for air, not lying on the bottom.

The baking soda won't hurt anything, just add it anyway to be sure. As to the epsom salts, a quick increase in gH won't bother the fish. I'd toss in 3-4 handfulls of epsom for that tank. Discus fry go through it all the time, soft acidic water with their parents, then into a hard alkaline environment for grow out with no adjustment. With the speed this hit those fish and what it was, some chemical was added to the water. Some of them faired better than the others.

If your water bill is high, your doin something wrong. I'm on city water here, have 11 tanks running, half of which get daily 50-75% changes. And the total cost for all of them is about $70 a month, that included electrical and water usage (Probably lower considering I just switched some over to sponge filters and insultated tanks so the heaters came on less)
 
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