Problem adding Kribs - keep dying

H

hallio

AC Members
Nov 13, 2004
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Sheffield, UK
Hi all,

This is my first post here so bear with me if I don't put all the right info up first time! I've been keeping tropical fish on and off for about 5 or 6 years so not exactly "new" but I am not too experienced in diagnosing problems as i've been pretty lucky so far.

I've been having a lot of trouble over the past 6 months or so when adding female kribs to my 20 gal tank. They keep dying. Sometimes in as little as 12 hours, the longest living was upto about 3 months. The tank did have a pair (a year or so ago) who bred once, the babies all died / got eaten and then the female died (of a broken heart?!). Since then i've been trying to add another female but with no luck. The male is about 18months old so fully mature and about 8-9 cm long and in great shape. When I do add a female he's generally receptive and starts "wiggling" in front of her within a day or two. The tank is quite well planted, I'm afraid I know nothing about plants so can't tell you what type they are. There are a few plastic plants and plenty of caves and hiding places too. There is a pleco, some neons and a platy in the tank too. Filtration is via a UGF and an external Eheim (new this week, old one was a Tetra Whisper 30). Re: maintenance I do about 20% water changes each week (water is treated with Wardley Chlor Out and is at room temperature) and vacuum the gravel weekly (as part of the water change process). The water looks good and the other fish all seem very happy. I've added some aquarium salt recently at 1gm per litre (so about 100gm). The test results using my new test set are :

Hardness - 60ppm
Alkalinty - almost zero (!!)
pH - 6.5
NO2 - 0
NO3 - 60ppm

I've read that kribs are tolerant of a wide range of conditions but is something way off here? We live in a soft water area. The pH is pretty constant - but what does that Alkalinity reading mean?

I also have a 10g tank with a couple of Rams and Clown Loaches in. The test results are v. similar to the other tank, perhaps a little less NO3 (about 40) and a touch more Alkalinty (40ppm). Yesterday I added two females to this tank (the 10g) as a kind of "quarantine" to see if it was tank related. One is dead already and the other is hugging the bottom and not looking great. But when they were new in they looked great - feeding almost instantly and swimming around looking very happy. I thought Clown Loaches were pretty fussy re: water, and they're in fine health!

I'm very perplexed as its happening too frequently to be just "bad luck". I've tried getting fish from several stores. I have been told Kribs do suffer from stress of the catching and journey more than other fish. Could it be this? When I put them in my tank here I float the bag for about 30-40 minutes (lights out) adding small quantities of tank water every 5 minutes then scoop out the fish and put in the tank leaving the lights off for about an hour.

Any thoughts / suggestions would be much appreciated as i'm getting very frustrated, not mention saddened at watching these fish die and keeping paying for new ones! I'm always wary of dumping "cures" into the tank - particularly as the other fish are all fine, and I had a bad experience with a treatment once that wiped out a load of healthy fish!

Many, many thanks,

Steve H
 
Welcome to the board :)

First, 60ppm of nitrates is a bit high. Under 30ppm is generally considered acceptable, though keeping them under 20ppm is even better. How often do you do water changes? The minimum for water changes is considered 20% weekly water change, but since your nitrates are still not under control with that, I would up it to 50%. So, I think that getting your nitrates down will be the first step to helping you keep female kribs. Also, check your tap water to see if it contains nitrates.

Next, your Alkalinity (aka kH and buffer) is very low and has the potential of causing a lot of problems. kH pretty much is how stable your pH is; without much of a buffer, your pH has the ability to swing wildly about which is very stressful for fish. You can raise your kH by adding small amounts of baking soda to your tank until your kH reads at about 3 degrees. This will also raise your pH, so you need to do it slowly. Keep in mind, though, that a stable pH is more important than the "correct" value in terms of fish health.

Next, your 10g is very overstocked. Clown loaches should get a foot or larger if kept in proper conditions. A 75g is the minimum tank size for them. More suitable loaches for a 10g are kuhli loaches. I also suspect that the rams may be killing/harrassing your females.

IME, kribs are very hardy fish and suffer less from catching and journey than other fish. If I were you, I would set up a seperate 10g tank for use as a quarentine. Make sure it is completely cycled and has stable values before adding a sole female krib. Make sure there are plenty of hiding spaces as well. Quarentine your female for about 3-4weeks. When you are ready to introduce her to the male, remove the male from your 20g and put her in. After an hour, reintroduce the male.

I think you'd be best off to discontinue salt. Salt shouldn't be used on a regular basis, only for disease treatment and preventative measures (when you suspect a fish may be falling ill).

HTH, and good luck :)
 
Thanks - this is a great board, TONS of information.

Anyway, water changes normally take the form of two 10% changes per week - one of which I use to vac the gravel. I'll up this and see what happens to the Nitrates. I'll check the tap water too - hadn't thought of that. Would replacing some of the plastic plants with real ones help bring them under control more "naturally"?

So how much baking soda should I add (I take it the regular stuff my wife has in the larder is OK!?). The funny thing here though is that the pH has always been very stable. But maybe that's just dumb luck!

The clowns are just juveniles but yeah, point taken. I'm hoping to "upgrade" a tank at some point to something more decent sized (been measuring up this morning!) before they get too much bigger. They seem happy at the moment (delirious in fact - they're great). The rams are pretty calm too from what I can see but I guess things will get more "tense" as they all grow. I haven't been trying to add kribs to this tank (until yesterday) anyway figuring it was a bit crowded. This was more of an "experiment" to see if I had massive problems with the other tank but it seems its not tank specific.

A quarantine tank (which I can double up as a "hospital" when needed) sounds like the way to go. When (hopefully "if"!) new fish do look like this - i.e no specific "disease" problems, just "heavy breathing" and not much life in them) is there a good treatment I can apply to help them get over it? I hate just watching them, not knowing what to do...

Thanks again.

Steve
 
OK - checked the tap water, no nitrates.

Second - we have "baking powder" and "bicarbonate of soda" in the cupboard. The baking powder's ingredients are listed as : flour, acid sodium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate. The bicarb is just that - bicarb! Which is the one I need?

Thanks
 
Sodium Bicarbonate (aka Bicarbonate of soda, baking soda) is what you want to use for buffering. It doesn't take too much - I use ~1/2 tsp per 10g. I would suggest adding some, then waiting an hour and testing your KH, then adding more if you need it - it's much easier to add more than do water changes to remove it ;)
 
I agree with blinky, it doesn't take much baking soda at all.

Plants will lower nitrates, but really only if you cater to them a lot and get fast growers (I.E. stem plants). I think water changes will be the best route since your tap doesn't have any nitrate to worry about. Depending on the stocking of your tank, sometimes you need to do more than the recommended 20% weekly. If you don't have an easy way to fill up your tank (you only have a bucket) you could try doing 2X 20% water changes and see how that works out.

HTH, and good luck with your kribs :)
 
Looks like the baking soda is working - added 3/4 tsp and the alkalinity looks a lot better. Thank you. Presumably i'm going to need to add appropriate quantities along with the (increased) water changes to keep a good buffer going.

Thanks again.

Steve
 
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