Had Enough!

[cdawson]

I second what monosebaelover wrote, if you don't do something fast you're not going to have any more fish left to be stubborn about. If you follow those "general rules" you're going to fail as a fish keeper (I learned the hard way, I recommend you don't. It's expensive). Your fish are all young, and not even close to full size. One by one those fish will die or be killed by the cichlids. Whether or not you see it happening now. Admit you made mistakes and fix them or the diseases will continue as will your dying fish.

 

[wayne]

I think
1. You have a lot of fish, inc. quite a few cichlids - I'd get the acara out now. They're peaceful but will get too large. The african butterflies are riverine so the pH/kh isn't an issue. The spilurum (blue eye) may or may not get spiky - mine were definitely NOT community safe..
2. If you have worms in your gravel I'd consider it dirty, and a probable source/home for unhelpful bacteria. More, better gravel vacs, and watch that feeding
3. Go for 2 smaller water changes twice a week - 20 litres or something
4. Home made CO2 - are you turning it off at night? Beware pH swings - measure it at mid day, then just before dawn and see what the numbers are

 

[mdfwhite]

Where does your water come from that u use for water changing.It could be the problem (u said u had parasites/worms).Try changing this.

You will have to get meds to get rid of the infections then use carbon in you filter for a month to remove the meds, once its done its job

Your pH/gH is to high for tetras,apistogrammas,bristlenose, you'll have to check but i think harlequins too.

And try repacing only 10% of you water weekly as this we be less stressful and gravel-clean only as nessesary, depends on size and how many fish u have.

U are gravel-cleaning to often, to much disturbance will stress fish and make conditions worse, and u may kill the benifical bacteria, not enough and u will have problems also, as u probably already know.

Thats all i can think of.
Hope that helps
p.s remember your not keeping fish,your keeping water,get the water right and your fish will be happy

 

[mayreee]

Good suggestions but all the comments you are making are from really old posts. So I am sure they have solved their problems by now. I accidently did it once too when I first came here.

 

[happychem]

There are three things that jump out at me right away when I read through your first post.

First, you have too many fish of too disparate types. Inch per gallon does not even come close to applying here, your cichids need more room to establish territories, and this means having things like caves for them, which takes up space.

Second, insufficient water changes. You should be aiming at a minimum 50% per week. Changing more water will not stress the fish. You don't need to do it all at the same time, two back to back 30% changes will be just as good. The closer your tank water chemistry to source (tap) chemistry, the better. People who claim that changing lots of water per week stresses fish don't change their water enough. What stresses fish is the buildup of organics in the water from fish wastes, you cannot measure these, but they're there.

Third, your nitrAte level is not 0, it is impossible. Even in an understocked tank, which yours is not.

Don't look at overstocking as a failure, we've all done it, I once had a 10g tank with 3 swordtails (+fry), 3 albino cories, 2 plecos (yikes!) and a declining number of tetras, first neons, then king blues. Look at it as an excuse to get another tank.

 

[9tails]

I do weekly water changes (with dechlorinator) of around 70 liters along with gravel vacing and alternate week filter cleaning (I have 2 big filters on it, 1 internal fluval jumbo and 1 external fluval 304) one week I clean the internal and the next i clean the external and so on.

What are you cleaning? I don't touch my filters for 3 months or so, apart from changing the prefilter gauze which catches all the crud. I'm not sure how these filters work, but I thought the bacteria needed to build up over a length of time to cope with the waste.