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Found fish gasping tonight...what the heck.

Digitalfiend

Member
Joined
4 Dec 2016
Messages
40
Location
Whitby, Ontario, Canada
I just had the weirdest thing happen in my 60-p. Around noon today my wife and I noticed all of our ember tetras swimming at the surface while the RCS seemed to be making their way up the branch wood to the moss at the surface too. At first I thought CO2, but the drop checker was deep green (it has fresh solution in it too). So I did a 50% water change, turned up the surface skimmer a bit, and the fish went back to swimming normally.

Fast forward to tonight and I come into the living room to find all the fish gasping again, all 150+ RCS practically trying to crawl out, and a few dead RCS on the bottom. So I fly into emergency mode and figure it has to be something with the filter. Upon opening the filter I could immediately see that the filter floss was completely clogged, which is surprising since I cleaned it about a month ago and the water was moving pretty good in the tank. Did another 50% water change and dropped the water temp from 24.5c to 22.5c hoping to get more O2 into the tank; raised the lily pipe up too and threw the lights on moonlight to maybe kick the plants back into producing O2. Checked my water parameters before the water change and everything looked good: 0/0/10.

Thankfully, none of my fish died, only lost about 5 RCS (out of 150+ lol); I really thought my 3 year old Ottos would be done for but nope, they are back to cleaning the glass.

The thing I don't get though is how clogged filter floss could cause such a drastic lack of O2 in the water? Maybe all the decomposing detritus/gunk in the filter water/pad and when the lights went out and plants switched to consuming O2 it was just too much for the tank? The odd thing is that it all happened in the span of one day - the fish have been seemingly quite happy until today.

So does it sound plausible that clogged filter floss could cause this, even if the filter was still flowing just fine? Any other ideas?
 
I don't think it's a clogged filter. I've never heard of that happening.

Is your soil new? aquasoil (like ada) lowers ph a lot for the first 6 weeks or so. new soil + pressurized co2 + high water level with little/no ripple could be the cause.

how long had the co2 been running before you notices the gasping livestock? bps?

do you know the kh of your tank water?
 
Fish gasp at the surface from raised ammonia/nitrite levels as well, so there could be a connection between clogged filter and the gasping but the spike must have been large enough for them to do that. However, in a CO2 tank it could be either. If you see shrimp trying to get out, things are bad...for one or another reason.

Replace that floss with a layer of medium sponge. You'll never turn back to floss once you try sponges. They never clog to the point of affecting the flow and in fact are better mechanical filters. Floss clogs and then the filter purges all that back in the water.
At the moment I use almost just sponges in my external as main media and I've never had it any better.
 
do you know the kh of your tank water?

This is a good question, not because it has anything to do with the CO2, because CO2 has no effect on KH. So if you KH has decreased from your original tap water measure, that's a sign water quality has dropped rapidly, and is the source of the gasping, even if you can't measure ammonia/nitrite.
 
One of the best ways of cleaning water cloudiness or disturbance in the tank example sand movement or plant replacing ,removing,is to put a temporary filter usually a smaller internal filter filled with floss running in tandem with the external ,when I have done this 24 hours later it’s taken out, because with clearer ,cleaner water the filter wool with be almost blocked or at least so full of dirt it will have a negative effect and send contaminants back in the tank,so I would think replacing filter wool in the main filter done weekly is best
 
Hi all,
could immediately see that the filter floss was completely clogged
Replace that floss with a layer of medium sponge. You'll never turn back to floss once you try sponges. They never clog to the point of affecting the flow and in fact are better mechanical filters. Floss clogs and then the filter purges all that back in the water. At the moment I use almost just sponges in my external as main media and I've never had it any better.
I agree with "@sciencefiction". I'm not a fan of filter floss, and I don't like any fine media that <"can clog inside the filter">.

cheers Darrel
 
Thanks guys. So is a "medium sponge" like the blue coarse pads you get from Eheim, that sort of thing? I've already got one in my classic 350/2015, between the mech and substrat, is that enough? Originally, I had bought a clear canister to be used as a pre-filter, which would allow me to easily keep the filter media clean but I wasn't sure the 2015 had enough flow, plus the connectors are the larger 16/22 diameter, so would have had to run adapters; figured I'd save the pre-filter setup for my 90-p.

This is actually the first time I've ever had something like this happen. I've only been in the hobby for 3 years or so but I swear there have been times when I've let the filter floss get a little too clogged in my 60-f and never encountered this, just reduced flow.

Oh and kH is around 3.
 
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