I am totally confused as to what's causing this. I lost three of my Cichlids in a week. I checked the water parameters and they are all fine. Nitride, Nitrate and Ammonia all show zero using the liquid test kit. I see no signs of disease such as ich, fin rot, cloudy eyes. There isn't much aggression except once in a while when they chase each other. I do water change every week. Water temperature is at 80 and ph is at 8.0 I have had them since they were juviniles and now they were about 3 inches. I feed them twice a day only for couple of minutes, none of the food makes it to the gravel. I am feeding them NLS sinking pellets and Hikari veggie pellets. The only thing that I changed a month ago is increase the amount of water being changed from 25% to 50%. The fish that died seem to have no energy to swim. If anyone has any idea as to what might be happening or what I should look for I would really appreciate it. Thanks!
Cichlids dieing
- Thread starter rahimsach
- Start date
Well the obvious question is the water declorinator... when you increased your water changes, did you add more conditioner? Also, could your city have switched from using chlorine to chloramines? This would cause a problem if you didn't use enough of the stuff...
Why are your nitrates 0?
Cathy
Why are your nitrates 0?
Cathy
beat me to it, that would be my first question that sticks out, sounds like something is wrong biologically
could it be too much conditioner and the fish got shocked from the drastic changes in chemistry?
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I have had this tank for over six months now. I really don't know why the Nitrates are zero, I am following the instructions on the test kit and it shows the very first color I think it yellow for Nitrate and Blue for Nitride. For surface aeration I have basically attached the jet nozzle to the XP3 output and then the HOB filter is providing some. I never see the Cichlids gasping for air so I thought that there must be sufficient oxygen. As far as dechloronator is concerned I always use a cap full which is recommended for 50 Gallons and I am changing about 30 gallons, btw I am using Prime. Also, I do put a low dosage of stress zyme everytime I do a water change. Am I over conditioning? I have been doing this for past 4 months without any issues. I will take a water sample to my LFS to double check on Nitrates
Stop adding the stress zyme and see if that makes a difference. You don't need it anyway and it is possible that there is some inert ingredient in it which is building up in your water.
Cathy
Cathy
I am using Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Freshwater Master Test Kits. Should I do a major water change like 80%, I still can't figure out what's killing them. The ones that died seemed pretty healthy couple of days back. Usually a sick fish would suffer for a few days but in this case it's pretty quick.
There's the problem I do believe, about 3 years ago I goofed and lost track of how much stress zyme I put in and it was too much and in about 3 hours or so after disaster hit, as fast as I could pull fish out of the tank others were dieing, out of 23 fish I had 10 casulties and it was right after I had did a water change and added it