Dead Fishie :(

[pugwash]

Hey Sup,

Just a thought, but you mentioned your little brother giving your babies a bath - just wondering if something similar occurred here, perhaps some other pollutant, which won't show up in your tests.

But hopefully it's old age - how long have you had him/her?

 

[LunchBox]

if all else fails, you could go get a different nitrate test and see if you get different results. That was what I did when I kept getting 0's with my AP test and it turned out my nitrates were up around 50! I got the tetra test kit, which is a little more complicated than the AP but more forgiving procedure-wise. it has 3 bottles of stuff and some zinc powder so there is more to it, but I never had a problem with the results from it.

the way I do the AP test now is I make sure I rinse the tube thouroughly in tank water, fill it up, add bottle 1, invert the tube a few times to mix it, then I just set it down and shake bottle 2 for 30+ seconds, then add bottle 2, then shake for 1 minute. I used to shake bottle 2 before starting the test so I could just put it in after mixing bottle 1, but I always got results of 0 that way.

I'm still not sure if nitrates are the problem or a bad test kit or what, but it sure sounds like what my fish were going through and reducing nitrates did the trick for them.

 

[supgourami]

I just think he was old, because if it was some sort of poisoning, the rest of fish would be sick or something?

But they aren't they are completely fine.

 

[IceH2O]

Gouramis like clean water. They are some of the 1st fish to succumb to high nitrates.

I think I read you only change a small percentage of your water once a month. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no way you have 0 nitrates even after a pwc.

My tank is heavily planted, I do 50% pwc weekly and my nitrates sit at 10 ppm. If I dose nitrates,which i find I need to every other week they'll go to 20 ppm and sit there. I decided my fish make 10 ppm of nitrates a week and my plants use 10 ppm so esentially I have a nice balance.

But I regress... Try the test again, you're getting false readings... Try it on another tank, have a friend that sucks at fishkeeping? You could see if you get 0 on their tank too.