22 Gallon Community Tank: The Joural

[altaaffe]

Yep - got to love store credit. I moved on 6 Synos and 7 Dolphins last week for a healthy crop of plants for the garden

[Dyjital]

Woke up this morning to 13 Sunset Platy babies in the breeder.

[Tim]

Agree there with the store credit, traded in a "teenage" oscar last week for a full crop of plants in my 46g.
Congrats on the fry Dyjital

[Dyjital]

I have one fry remaining.

The good news on this tank though is: drum roll please.....


Seachem Flourish Excel works wonders. I'll toss up some photos today soon as I find the camera. One of my plants has broken the waters surface and is growing out of the water. The hygrophila that started as a little nub 2" tall is the one growing out of the water. It's also shot off two more stalks that are reaching towards the sky.

Plants are looking very green and healthy. Nitrates have stayed around 10ppm

My question is simple: with healthy plants and a lot of them, now that I'm adding carbon into the tank will that help them consume more ammonia, nitrite and nitrates?

Currently on..... two weeks of Excel and I should have used it at the start.
(photos to come)

[Dyjital]

Blamo:





Lookin sechy mah man!

[Tim]

Lookin really good

[Dyjital]

Tonight my wife spotted two more baby highfin/twin-bar mixes in the tank. They are about 3 to 4mm long. (natural and not from the breeder)

I did a trimming on the sword and the two hygrophila's that were breaking the surface. I trimmed them at the top of the plant so they will go out instead of up now.
Gave all trimmings to my G'ma N-law for her goldfish that are like 8" long in the 55g tank. They like my plant trimmings.

I'm hoping that the sword will grow like crazy after the trim. The one in the 10g tank did just that the last time I trimmed it back.
I cut off all of the leaves that had brown, holes or that were damaged from when I bought it. It has already doubled in stalks since I got it and now it will only have good leaves to support.

[Dyjital]

Water check.

Two days ago I took out a filter and added just floss in the back of the HOB. Ammonia went up a little, somewhere between 0 and .25, so nothing to be worried about.

Though I did notice that my nitrates have went from 10 down to zero with NO water changes.

Alta: does that seem normal? I'm guessing it's because I have helped the plants with the Excel and they are removing more stuffs from the water now that they are healthier.

[altaaffe]

with the ammonia going up, it's more likely that anything that was being converted by the filter now isn't.

As for ammonia levels and nitrate levels, in my experience it takes quite a bit of plant mass to achieve this and I'm not sure how much you have there but with a low bio load - yes it is feasible. You can also get ammonia spikes when removing plant matter, as the plants will compete against the filter for the ammonia, another reason why you can end up no nitrates because the plants take it out first.

[Dyjital]

Appreciate the info.

I assumed the ammonia would go up a little since i changed out filters but I have really increased the number of plants I have in the tank. I'll have to toss up some photos of it as it's getting to be a jungle in there.

So with plants using ammonia there is NO by-product (eg: nitrites, ) so that basically ends the tank cycle right there. I follow. More plants = less bacteria colonies and less production of the end result: Nitrates

I do have a rather high bio-load.

Current stats are in my signature.

[Dyjital]

Saturday:
I noticed the male swordtail acting weird. Sunday I found him dead. I figured he probably just died from being stressed from the move.

Sunday:
Found my male sunset platy DEAD!!!!!!
80% water change, nitrates were at 40 so I did my 2nd or 3rd change of the tank.
Stats looked good after.
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: <10
Nitrite: 0

Monday: I start up the tank like usual in the morning, lights on and breakfast for the fishies.
I come home to find my female marigold swordtail DEAD along with my other female sunset platy DEAD!!!!!

I have had 4 fish die in the last 3 days.
Tank stats as of 5 minutes ago:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite:0
Nitrate: 0
pH: 7.2

Nothing is wrong with the other fish in the tank, none have ill effects, none are acting weird.. Nothing.
Even the babies in the tank are alive. The ones that are like 6mm long and the bigger ones.

One of my ideas of what happened is that MAYBE I didn't treat one of the buckets with dechorinator when I did the water change. Which would have killed off bacteria causing my ammonia levels to increase.

The other idea is that they ate some of the BBA (Black beard algae) and it killed them. I find that odd though, 4 fish doing that all within a few days?

I have never had an issue with the tank, fish in the tank up to this point.

[Tim]

wow that really sucks
hopefully you can find the problem, I'm not sure one bucket worth of de chlorinator would be enough to kill them all?
I didn't know that algae was toxic either...
good luck finding the problem

[Dyjital]

My remaining Sunset Platy that I had in the breeder had all her babies.

I came home from work and there were 25 of them in there. PLUS there was one with FOUR eyes and one that was not really developed. So she popped out 27 babies. Not bad for a little fish.

Water couldn't have been too bad since she gave birth and they are still alive..

[Tim]

Wow you have some freaky things going on there

[Dyjital]

No kidding i think I am in the twilight zone


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yG6JA2a ... ata_player