Weird tank happenings

[fishflaps]

:help:

I have a 35g long tank thats nearly a year old (beginning Oct) I have 1 fantail redcap oranda left in it. I do fortnightly 30% water changes but over the last 3 weeks there is a horrible brown gunk covering everything! The glass got so brown within a matter of days & we couldn't see in :eek3: so I cleaned it off, & saw all the fake plants & stones were covered in it. I cleaned the stones & the plants in clean warm water, let them dry, put them back in, gravel vacced & its back again even worse than before & now theres a thick layer of what looks like diahorrea at the edge of the tank in the gravel Stemroach the fish seems happy enough now but when the glass was caked in it he sat at the bottom very depressed... does anyone know what it could be?

We lost our chocolate oranda & little algae eater a few weeks back after a good 8 months of tank perfection. I was thinking some kind of infection killed them. The algae eater was just dead on the bottom one morning & the chocolate oranda swam upside down for a day or 2 & died before I could give peas or find meds.. :headshake2: We test the water before every water change & it is just as always - normal results.. odd..

:help: I'm baffled!

 

[wataugachicken]

first of all, the "brown stuff" was diatomic algae. it usually occurs in newer tanks, but can also occur in older tanks if the bacterial cycle is compromised. the deaths of your other fish probably caused ammonia and nitrite spikes, which led to the brown algae outbreak. it is not harmful, but it is ugly. try upping your water changes to 30% every week instead of every two weeks. that will take out more of the "nutrients" that the algae feeds on, and it should go away more quickly. the good bacteria that process fish waste live everywhere in the tank and in the filter, and so when you washed those rocks, you killed off some of the bacteria - which is why the algae got worse.

the nasty looking stuff along the edge of the gravel is more of the same algae - it gets lots of light there so it can grow below the gravel against the glass.

what kind of algae eater did you have? it may have starved. the oranda probably had a swim bladder infection, which would account for the upside-down swimming.

 

[didy]

My guess is you started to notice the algae growing because the "little algae eater" is no longer there to feed on it.

 

[fishflaps]

According to the fish suppliers the algae eater was a butterfly plec, able to live in a coldwater tank. He measured 3 inches long, apparently thats the biggest they grow to..

I always thought plecs were warm water fishes but he lived in our goldie tank for 8 months but just randomly died as I said. He probably did starve. We did use algae wafers too but the fish used to eat it before the plec had chance..

So the advice is not to wash the stones & plants & just let the diatomic stuff go away on its own? As long as its not harmful to the fish then i'm happy

 

[wataugachicken]

do a search for "hillstream loach". while there is a pleco commonly called a butterfly pleco, saying that the fish was recommended for a cold-water set up tells me it was probably a loach. they are called many different names at stores. hillstream loaches do well in cold/cool water tanks, but their native habitat is very fast-flowing, almost whitewater rivers. to survive, they need a strong current, a lot of oxygen in the water, VERY clean water, and lots of algae to eat. a lack of any of those factors could have caused the death.

 

[wataugachicken]

Actually, here is a link: http://www.loaches.com/articles/hillstream-loaches-the-specialists-at-life-in-the-fast-lane

 

[lizzies]

i just had one of my hong kong plecs die... it went realy pale and then died the next day... im a bit worried cos i had 2... now only one and i dont want this one to die... my ph level is at a constant 6.2... theses nothing i can do that makes a difference... the tap water is 6.0 aswell so theres not alot i can do realy... ive tried though.