Rate My Fish Tank

Mon Feb 02, 2009 4:44 pm GMT   Reply      

feed once every other day for a week or so .......... NYC water is rated as some of the best water in the country, but thats for human cunsumption, there is chlorines, minerals from pipes and all the transfer systems ..........definately try to find RO water...........if your in NYC look for a salt water LFS and they might carry RO water in house

my opinion {and it my opinion not gospel by anymeans} is that the worlds water salt or fresh doesn't have chems in it {naturaly anyway, lol} so i don't put them in my tank...............if you balance a tank with chems as oposed to naturally, you will always have to use chems to control it

your not doing anything wrong the way your operating but by you asking questions it shows that you are moveing from fish keeper to aquarist and thats another level of care

welcome, it'll work out man


Boss

Mon Feb 02, 2009 6:22 pm GMT   Reply      

Boss is right, Don't add any chemicals or anything to your water unless you really have to. Keep it all natural. The city water also is not all natural. Like Boss also said it's great for human consumption (so we're told) but its cleaned by humans for humans. Def. get yourself set up with some RO water, you can't go wrong there. I have a pleco and some convict cichlids and I never add anything to the water. I've had them for about a year or more now. I just leave the tank alone, I never mess with it unless I do water changes, when I do that, thats the only thing I do. The less stuff you add and the less messing with the tank, the happier the fish are gonna be.
Unless you have some sort of disease or parasite in there, this is the only time you should be adding any chemicals or antibiotics.

Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:49 pm GMT   Reply      

MY SONS TANK FUCKING CRASHED! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!

Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:01 pm GMT   Reply      

unfortunately ..............nothing...................sorry to here it man, that really sucks

bout the only thing to do now if you want is to tear it all down and start fresh, clean everything good, {no detergents} fill it back up and start cycleing, you'll be ready for fish in a month or so

again , sorry for the lose

Boss

Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:19 pm GMT   Reply      

I know it sucks to look at water.....but thats what you have to do....for a good solid month. Or it will crash again. Moderation is key. It takes a while to get it up and running. I went three months before I had a fish. Blueshoes went close to 6 or more. We have all had tanks crash I went through three planted boss has gone through it twice.....Just clean it out start it back up and cylce that beast. Wait a month and add one fish....wait a few more weeks and add another couple of fish.

Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:11 pm GMT   Reply      

i would go to the nearest pet store and ask for any kind of chemical that clears cloudy water i had the same problem it worked for me and if you leave ur lite on alot that might be some of the problem

Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:04 pm GMT   Reply      

well....personally........if the tank has been UP for three weeks........and has a couple of african ciclids......the bioload is way too massive for the bacteria in the tank. so the white in the water is a bacteria bloom.....if it has a green tint then it is an algae base. But 10 bucks says if you were to pull a droplet of water out and put it on a slide......look at it under the microscope.......it would be bacteria. Which means a bacteria bloom large enough to turn the water white......is caused by an insufficent cycle.

Wed Feb 04, 2009 12:01 pm GMT   Reply      

just leave the tank as is, make sure you take out dead fish. wait a couple of weeks, then add your least aggressive type of fish you want. the next week add another, and so on. This will slowly get your water parameters up to par. sounds to me like it is just the fact that you added to much fish at one time and the bioload was too intense. just let it run for a while. be patient.

as for the stresscoat, it is fine to use. i use it every water change for my malawi tank. it works fine to me, without incidence. don't add salt unless your fish show signs of illness. what type of food do you feed your cichlids?

You will find that in the long run, a tank becomes easier and easier to manage. Water parameters level off, and not much can change (unless you do something drastic to the aquarium). Eventually you might have to battle algae, but other than that a weekly water change of 20-25% is normal. However a water change every 3 or 4 days is even better. As you change the water, the tank should become clearer and clearer.

Wed Feb 04, 2009 3:12 pm GMT   Reply      

Like these guys said, you pretty much just start over and hopefully you've learned from any mistakes.

This time around though, I would change your stocklist; in the pic/info of your tank you say you have a venustus(12" at least, too big for this tank), a bumblebee cichlid(around 6", also pretty big), an OB zebra(5") and what looks like a few various pseudotropheus species. All of the fish you bought will outgrow this tank and are far too aggressive to keep in this tank anyways, so you probably would have had fish beat eachother to death until one or two remained. Im not trying to be a dick, but research is the best thing you can do for these fish.

I understand if your son wanted those fish(beleive me, it wasnt too long ago that I was getting my dad to buy me my first fishies) but personally; I feel you should go with cichlids from lake tanganyika(if you want african cichlids). Like a pair of altolamps, some shellies, julies etc. They are all really slow growers(especially altolamps) so you'd be able to happily keep these fish for a few years before having to upgrade the tank.

Sorry about the loss though, hopefully things run smoother for you next time.