Epiphyte
Member
Perhaps I'm just getting pissed off because my tank has thrown another curve ball at me. It honestly makes me want to strip the whole thing down and start again.
First off a while ago I was reading into too much nitrates with a double triple dose, so I reduce my dose down to normal triple dose method spread over a week.
After I did this, algae, so much of it. Green spot, green dust, blue green, diatoms, the works. My plants are brown, my gravel is brown, the glass grows algae faster than I can scrape it off. Everything just looks rotten and dead. Apart from my Java ferns which seem to be getting better for some weird reason.
Then I notice one of my fish has a severely curved spine, so I brace myself to deal with potential TB, but everything is still alive a week or two later so I'm hoping it's something benign, but it's in the back of my mind that if it is I will loose most of the tank.
Doing a big water change one of my large (probably 75cm or longer) bits of bogwood makes itself loose (my own poor construction I will admit but I can't fix it now it's in place and flooded) and falls over in the tank. For the life of me I can't get it back to where it belongs and for.it to stay there. My carefully planted tank is now all bent as the log has cleaved it's way through a bunch of stems.
After a while of battling and losing to algae I reverted back to a double triple dose to see if that fixed things. Yes, it seems to, the tank is looking more green than brown at least. Perhaps a small victory.
Then I do a rare water test of all parameters and find I have 0.25ppm of ammonia, probably caused by three of my salt and pepper Cory's on a suicide mission into my Eheim skimmer, a device that had claimed far too many of my fish and pumped their decomposing ammonia filled bodies into the water column. Either that or the die off of algae had caused an ammonia spike.
So daily water changes need to happen, that's fine, it's only 0.25, it'll be sorted fast, it's a big tank (350L) with plenty of filtration. On day three (today) my fish are acting very strangely. A lot of the smaller shoaling fish are uncharacteristically grouping up in darker sections of the tank. Other ones are becoming aggressive to each other, my Amano shrimp come out from the plants for the first time in months swimming in the open. One of my little ember tetras, which I've never lost a single one, starts struggling to swim and stay upright, clearly looking like it was on deaths doorstep.
I re-test for ammonia.... 0.5, verging on 0.75ppm. Another huge water change, perhaps 75%, fish acting normal again, for now at least.
I know this thread has zero point to it and I'm just moaning, but I am a sole fishkeeper so I can't moan to folks I know!
Does anyone else get these periods of everything seeming to go wrong in their tank?
Makes me want to rip everything out and start again. If it wasn't for the fish I have in there which I can't store anywhere I almost certainly would!
Anyway, apologies, rant over.
First off a while ago I was reading into too much nitrates with a double triple dose, so I reduce my dose down to normal triple dose method spread over a week.
After I did this, algae, so much of it. Green spot, green dust, blue green, diatoms, the works. My plants are brown, my gravel is brown, the glass grows algae faster than I can scrape it off. Everything just looks rotten and dead. Apart from my Java ferns which seem to be getting better for some weird reason.
Then I notice one of my fish has a severely curved spine, so I brace myself to deal with potential TB, but everything is still alive a week or two later so I'm hoping it's something benign, but it's in the back of my mind that if it is I will loose most of the tank.
Doing a big water change one of my large (probably 75cm or longer) bits of bogwood makes itself loose (my own poor construction I will admit but I can't fix it now it's in place and flooded) and falls over in the tank. For the life of me I can't get it back to where it belongs and for.it to stay there. My carefully planted tank is now all bent as the log has cleaved it's way through a bunch of stems.
After a while of battling and losing to algae I reverted back to a double triple dose to see if that fixed things. Yes, it seems to, the tank is looking more green than brown at least. Perhaps a small victory.
Then I do a rare water test of all parameters and find I have 0.25ppm of ammonia, probably caused by three of my salt and pepper Cory's on a suicide mission into my Eheim skimmer, a device that had claimed far too many of my fish and pumped their decomposing ammonia filled bodies into the water column. Either that or the die off of algae had caused an ammonia spike.
So daily water changes need to happen, that's fine, it's only 0.25, it'll be sorted fast, it's a big tank (350L) with plenty of filtration. On day three (today) my fish are acting very strangely. A lot of the smaller shoaling fish are uncharacteristically grouping up in darker sections of the tank. Other ones are becoming aggressive to each other, my Amano shrimp come out from the plants for the first time in months swimming in the open. One of my little ember tetras, which I've never lost a single one, starts struggling to swim and stay upright, clearly looking like it was on deaths doorstep.
I re-test for ammonia.... 0.5, verging on 0.75ppm. Another huge water change, perhaps 75%, fish acting normal again, for now at least.
I know this thread has zero point to it and I'm just moaning, but I am a sole fishkeeper so I can't moan to folks I know!
Does anyone else get these periods of everything seeming to go wrong in their tank?
Makes me want to rip everything out and start again. If it wasn't for the fish I have in there which I can't store anywhere I almost certainly would!
Anyway, apologies, rant over.