Urgent: Hyperventilating Kuhlis

That's good! The issue with the HOB and your substrate....is it that the HOB outflow stirs it up too much?
 
yes. To the point where you can't see more than an inch into the tank (looks like muddy swamp water). And stirring it up is only going to increase the amount of ammonia released, I'm guessing (aquasoil is notorious for causing ammonia spikes, which again would be fine if it weren't for the fact that I don't have a functioning filter)

Edit: Also, now that I look again, nitrites aren't completely 0. They're somewhere between 0 and 0.25ppm
 
How did you acclimate the fish? If you use Prime it "locks up" ammonia by converting it to ammonium, a less harmful form but it will still show on API type tests. Sounds to me like maybe low oxygen levels
 
I don't know if someone else will come along and suggest anything better, but I'd get a filter on that tank so you don't loose all of them. The ammonia spike with out your intervening with water changes until Tuesday is going to adversely affect the whole tank. Can you figure out a way to take some established media out of the eheim and stuff it into the HOB? To slow down the outflow I would first fill the tank up as high as possible to lessen the force of the incoming flow. I would not run CO2 right now with what's going on. And if you need to slow down the incoming flow even further after you've filled the tank up as high as you can, I'd wrap something around the intake to slow the suction in, which is also going to slow the flow out. Pantyhose or a sponge or something.

Remember, every time you do a water change when ammonia is showing, you're cutting it down, but it's going to rise again. If you do one 50% water change with a measurement of .5 ammonia, you'll get it down to .25. Do another 50% water change to get it down to .125. I'd get that ammonia down as low as possible before you leave, not just do one water change.
 
I think the nitrite will burn their gills faster than the ammonia. I went through this with a spike of only .25 nitrite and 0 ammonia.
 
I'll figure something out to interrupt the output. The question is...should I put the kuhlis back in the tank or not? I have a 6 gallon that I could move all the fish to and put a filter on that. Or I could leave the kuhlis in that 6 gallon without a filter. Or I could everyone back into the main tank with the HOB on it
 
it sounds like it is from the elevated ammonia level. do more water changes to help get that level to 0.

adding fish while you didnt have a valid filter running on your tank probably wasnt the best thing for the situation, so you'll need to really compensate for the new bioload addition with more and more water changes.
 
yes I wasn't planning on that happening. gf bought the fish without asking me and Eheim told me the replacement piece would arrive by today
 
You could certainly keep them in the 6 gallon container with the filter. Sounds like you've got 5 loaches and some neons and shrimp. You're going to have to move the shrimp too, they're not going to tolerare ammonia an nitrite. Keeping them all in the container would eliminate having to deal with the substrate too right now. And you wouldn't have to rig anything up to slow the HOB flow down, just let her rip!
 
Already rigged it up lol. Probably better this way b/c removing the shrimp is going to be impossible without also removing all of the plants (semi-densely planted).

So I guess the question is...loaches in the 6 gallon without a filter or in the main tank with the filter?
 
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