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Unknown problem with ember tetras. No one can identify it?

Test kits are not reliable. Just keep up with water changes, oxygenation and whatever medication you want to give them. I would quarantine the fish. If you cant then Id put it down for the sake of the rest if you cant find a cure.
 
So you'd recommend putting an air line in? I don't have one of these at all at the moment and I do get a bio film on top of the water but I remove it quite regular, would getting an air pump be a good idea?
 
Odd one isn't it.. The fish are from what I would say is a very well maintained and reputable aquarium shop so I am confident they were OK when I got them. I was thinking to setup my old Fluval Chi as a quarantine tank and put the one black fish into it but I am concerned it being alone would only stress it out...

This would just be extremely stressful to the lone fish - new tank surroundings, no mates, changing water parametres re the tank is not cycled (you can do 25% water changes every 12 hours to limit ammonia/nitrite but this is still not as efficient as a cycled filter).

You might check with the shop whether these fish were wild caught or farmed, sometimes wc can have some odd latent parasites/viruses but this is rare & treatment is generally just supportive care: excellent water conditions, non stressful tankmates, suitable foods, suitable aquarium size/décor re the fish's immune system is best suited to deal with whatever.

Whenever you start with medications, it's recommended to optimize oxygenation of the water, anything that ripples the surface or "splashes" will do this (whether an airstone or pump return), removing/breaking up surface film will help with air exchange, lower water temperature means more dissolved gases ...
- the frequent water changes should improve (reduce) the surface film
- I don't think there's anything you can do with the intank filter to ripple the water surface (or "splash" - gently as most fish will find rigorous "splashing" stressful)
- look at adding the chi filter to help with surface movement (no idea how practical this is as I've never looked at the system)

Something I'd missed in your earlier posts was consideration of removing the sponge or ceramic noodles - definitely don't do this!
both will contain filter bacteria (good) + debris (not so good)
The bacteria associated with debris tend not to be the sort that are efficient N-cycle bacteria, they are however usually fast growing, opportunists so it's "good" to limit these while encouraging/supporting growth of the much slower paced N-cycle bacteria ie gently rinse to remove debris, always use tank water or dechlorinated, similar parameter tap.

If you weren't already treating the tank with unknown chemicals (the eSHa products), I'd suggest gently rinsing the sponge to remove debris - though perhaps you do this already as part of your tank maintenance? - as this would likely help reduce that surface scum BUT at this stage, just use the daily water changes to do this.
Don't rinse the sponge or ceramic noodles for 7-14 days after the last treatment, obviously the 14 day is more conservative ... again you should continue with the frequent 25% water changes during this period following the last application of eSha chemicals.

The "black" sponge may just be that, dark material, other times it's an indication of small amounts of carbon/charcoal integrated into the sponge - after a couple months life in a tank, this amount of charcoal is usually "exhausted" & it will merely act as another surface for your "sticky" N-cycle bacteria, ie I'd not be concerned about removing the sponge at this time in terms of any charcoal it may contain (you mentioned your sponge is well aged) BUT I would be concerned re the N-cycle bacteria population (that would leave along with the sponge).

Once you get the tank back to normal (re no more medications & usual water change regime), then you can sort out a schedule for rinsing the sponge & filter to remove debris - never rinse the sponge & ceramic noodles at the same time. The sponge should be collecting/trapping the majority of the debris so you may want to gently rinse this weekly or monthly depending.
The ceramic noodles should never need to be rinsed more than a few times a year & always wait a couple weeks after the sponge disturbance.

In a suitably stocked & maintained tank, gentle rinsing of the filter media should not noticeably upset the N-cycle but it does open the door to mistakes, so this is often not suggested by shops/suppliers etc.

I'm going on about all this maintenance to remove debris as I'm assuming the surface scum & lost fish reflect higher levels of dissolved organics in the water column.
If you do a sponge rinse & there is very little "murk", there really is no debris etc concern (& my assumptions are completely invalid).

Lowered water temperature to increase dissolved oxygen: look at the recommended temperature range for your fish before embarking on this path.
Seriously Fish:
embers 20 - 28C
glowlights 24 - 28C
neons 21 - 28C

So if your tank is running at the upper range, you might slowly lower temp to 23 - 24C (adjust heater down 1C every couple of days ... again this is the conservative approach re tank is in a state of some confusion)

(you mentioned that you had more of the glowlights & neons, but have lost fish numbers of both - give some thought to this)

Patience is key when sorting out tank/fish issues, don't jump from one treatment to the next - especially when you have no idea what the chemicals are - even using carbon/charcoal to (possibly) remove chemicals between treatments, fish may remain stressed by a previous treatment for days to weeks even after the chemical has been removed from the water column.
Another note about carbon/charcoal removal of chemicals, it's usually a process of 12 - 24 hours not a couple hours, & even then, depending on the chemical & other dissolved compounds in your water column, the process may be incomplete (carbon/charcoal "activation" & pore size are contributing factors to this process, most carbon/charcoal sold into the pet trade is low grade/efficiency).

Fortunately fish are very good at managing despite us ;)
 
This is all very very good information and I thank you all enormously for it, I think I need to rethink what I do with my tank maintenance as I fear I am overdoing it in regards of the sponge and noodles, I "rinse" both in a bucket that has the old tank water in once a month when doing my weekly water change. I think I'll write up my whole process and allow you guys to critique it so I can offer my fish the best home I can. The sponge does get a lot of debris on it and I generally squeeze it out and rub my hand over the top of it when I do the once a month jobby so I that sounds too aggressive. I'll write it up shortly if you don't mind...
 
So my process is this.

Weekly I clean my tank by going around it with either a metal scraper or magnetic cleaner to remove any algae etc from inside the glass. I then turn off the pump and start draining water with a gravel vac, generally I do disturb the gravel but not sure if this is a good idea or bad as it does have a lot of muck inside it but I've heard with a planted tank this is not a great idea..

I drain about 20% and then throw that water away. I use the same bucket to fill up with the same water making sure to get the water as close to the tank waters temperature as possible. I then add Fluval Aqua Plus to dechlorinate the water whilst still in the bucket (I add around 5ml as this seemed to be about right for 10 litres of water) and the same amount of Fluval Cycle and slowly add this to the tank.

Once a month I've been removing the sponge and squeezing it whilst submerged in the bucket and removing all the debris then placing it back into the tank and also dunking the bag with the noodles in into the same water and putting it back.

I then dose with Tropica's standard ferts but will be grabbing some EI when this runs out. My tank isn't heavily planted and the substrate is pure gravel with just vallis and anubias on bogwood so very simple plants.

I was contemplating switching to Seachem prime once my Aqua Plus runs out but not sure which is better.
 
Just catching up from some time away. From the photos of the test results, there doesn't appear to be any major problem there. Again, look for a definite green tint to show ammonia detection, and going away from a pure cyan for signs of nitrite.

Dechlorinators are much of a muchness other than their concentration and value. Seachem Prime is one of the more concentrated ones so does last a long time. Consider getting some 1ml syringes to help dose it if you don't have some already, they're cheap on ebay.
 
Your rinsing of the sponge & noodles is likely just fine, again to be conservative, you might rinse them on alternate cycles - if there's significant debris building on the sponge, rinse this more frequently - this will also mean that it takes less vigorous cleaning action ... if I'm recalling my N-cycle bacteria growth charts correctly, "optimum" pH range is ~ 6.5 - 7.5, beyond either limit, the bacteria grow more slowly, metabolize more slowly ... and the same level of ammonia is more "toxic" at alkaline than acidic pH, so these are considerations for your tank than may differ slightly from literature.
(I completely do not recall if there were any hard water studies done, the "growth" studies were done in moderately soft water - again I don't recall the actual values but it was convention "standard", rather like room temp of 22C :rolleyes: )

Gravel with larger spaces does mean that you may end up with more debris settling in, thus increased dissolved organics (DOC) in the water column even in the absence of increased nitrate levels (which are often used as a measure of how effective the water change routine is at controlling buildup).
In a heavily planted tank, some of these nitrates may be used by plants (they preferentially use ammonia & nitrite), so in most aquaria, it's water change that reduces the levels of nitrates & DOCs.
In a lightly planted tank, I'd not rely on plants to utilize the majority of the debris that settles in the gravel - again with a more sand texture, debris will sit atop the substrate & is readily removed with the vac.

You might (notice the might!) embark on a gravel cleaning regime - every 3-5 days, really vac out the debris from a small section (up to 1/3 of the surface area) during your daily water change; in areas where the plants have really rooted, leave the debris. Do this while you're engaging in this present cycle of tank "cleanup", once you feel everything is back on even keel, just vac as needed.

When you're doing things that may negatively impact N-cycle bacteria in the tank (these sticky bacteria are on most surfaces with very few in the water column), space out the actions.

Whenever you do extra tank maintenance, it's prudent to increase water changes ie 25% daily or every other day etc rather than weekly, this will even out any possible ammonia etc spikes, after 1-2 weeks you can go back to your regular maintenance.

I've not used the Fluval Aquaplus, I use Prime not only as it's cheap! but it's also very effective - unfortunately previous tech sheets/data are no longer available on the Seachem website (they do have a forum with loads of product info hidden here & there, you can also post your own questions) but Prime is more than just Sodium thiosulfate.
(this is already too lengthy so I'll just stop with that statement ;))

If you're comfortable & have a good routine with 20% water change, just do that rather than my "25%"

Use Cycle if you like, it's not particularly effective or harmful, some studies from way back indicated that even though it lacked the type of N-cycle bacteria that are actually isolated from aquaria, adding it to the tank water lessened the time needed to establish "X" level of N-cycle bacteria sooooo truth in advertising :bookworm:

Re switching off of Tropica to EI, I'd not bother with a lightly planted small tank ... but I'm lazy! and if you've got a nicely balanced tank with minimal algae on established anubias ...
 
Chuck some hornwort in. 99.9% of fish disease is caused by water quality, which will be sorted out very quickly by a macrophytic plant like the above.

Nitrate test etc. are generally crap, so it's always best to assume there's something else to be done to improve water quality.
 
For now then I'll just continue with my normal routine and do 25% weekly water changes after completing a full week of daily 25% changes. I'll remember to not clean both filter medias at the same time as well.
 
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