Death takes a holiday.

[ancientaquarist]

Hi All- Well my 150 community has become nightmarish. In order to fill it I saved R/O but we had to resort to my garden hose through the window and try as I may I have been unable to get my pH below 7.2 and all 18 of my apistogrammas-mostly agasizzi and cockatuoides began dyring off-plus seven of my eight Laetacara curviceps and all but one male Bolivian Ram.

I lost all my cardinal tetras including the gorgeous golden clone and my beloved Ancistrus. I tried everything I could find in my local store to get the Ph. down to 5.8 in slow and small increments but nothing has worked. I also lost one of my three gorgeous Wattley high fin turquoise discus. So at the end of month one I have a single cardinal (of 17) and a single curviceps (of 8) and I lost Golda, my albino Ancistrus.

I have called Home Depot and they are taking back the GE R/O which only
produces 1.33 gallons per day and I have ordered a professional model that produces 150 gallons per day and has a backflush which lengthens the life of the membrane to three or four years. It is manufactured by Osmoticwaterfiltration in Indiana. Any comments on this system and business?

And I am purchasing from Neil a nice assortment of dwarfs and one of my favorite cichlids-Cleithracara maroni-the first cichlid I ever bred. I keep seeing photos of a xanthistic morph of Etroplus maculatus. Where can I
buy a group of youngsters? Oh, I lost all 12 Blue German Rams.

The plantings are doing great and my huge schools of characins also.
I adore my 5 Cory pandas and the Siamese algae eater is doing a good job. Neil, I will mail you the money order tomorrow-please send snail mail address once more tonight. Sorry but things are so confused here. I am
thrilled that my rust Cabomba furcata is doing well. The scape is based heavily on red plants and rust stones and bogwood with many red fishes-bloodfins, flammeus, rosaceus, Microgeophagus altispinosus, usw.

As I get better at this hobby again i will try an all red aquascape with a
running dwarf form of Crypt. wendtii as the ground cover and these fabulous "Indian Red" swordplants. My baby kribs are big guys and gals now eating full sized black-worms and mysis shrimp. I adore them. I
ended with 23 survivors who are now between 0.8" and 1.3" The males are huge.

Have a safe and healthy holiday weekend form your still optimistic friend.
checkered barbs

 

[cootwarm]

What happened? Did the garden hose contaminate your water? I've sipped a drink off the garden hose a few times and not only does it have a funny taste, but it has an order to it as well.

I'm planning to get an R/O unit in September. I've had great success using peat moss to lower the pH (4.4-4.6). It removes most of the hardness (GH 4 & KH 2), but I think this may be the limit of the peat moss. I'd like the hardness even lower for some of the apistos that prefer it lower (KH 0-1).

I also want to take many photographs of my apistos this winter. I think if I use R/O water, then I can use less peat water to lower the pH. My gut feeling is that the slight yellow tint to the water in my tanks now will effect the way the colors of the fish will appear when photographed. I expect that with R/O water, I can use a minimal amount of peat water.

I don't have any personal experience with R/O water, but from the posts on this forum, I gather that R/O units don't lower the pH very much, but by removing the hardness, other methods of lowering the pH are more effective. I think some people use CO2 with R/O water to lower the pH. I hope someone will correct me if my understanding of this is wrong.

 

[ancientaquarist]

No. But the tap water is hard and alkaline.

I only had 15 gallons of R/O and so 125+ was tap water through a drinking water hose. Unfortunately our tap water is 7.6-8.0 and very alkaline, As the fish began dying I tried everything (peat, chemical softeners, black water extract and replaced 1.33 gallons per day but the pH never went below 7.5. Now I will be able to replace 40-50% per day until everything is doing well.

The peat acidified the water slightly and softenend slightly but nothing worked. Ammonia was zero. Low conductivity, low phosphate, reasonably soft BUT the pH remained stubbornly alkaline. Now there are 2 discus,
1 Bolivian Ram and a gorgeous Laetacara female. But more than 30 cichlids died and my beautiful golden Ancistrus-plus all the cardinals save one, one Cory, one Blue Tetra, usw.

A very disappointing beginning versus my 29 gallon where I am removing plants which are growing like mad and where the Pelvi, pulchers raised
23 young is a community tank with no help from me. They bred within the first two weeks.

I believe having a huge daily supply of R/O should do the trick.

 

[amanda huggenkiss]

It sounds like you had a lot of beautiful fish in this tank. I'm so sorry to hear things went wrong.

My first thought on reading your post was that the garden hose was the likely culprit. But from the way your post was worded, it actually sounds like this is the first time you've ever filled this tank. If so, what did you do about cycling the tank? Did you add nitrifying bacteria or seed with materials from a mature tank? How long has the tank been set up? Did you add all the fish right away? Or gradually over a period of several weeks?

 

[ancientaquarist]

Death takes a holiday. Reply.

Hi, Amanda- I set up a brand new tank. Added cycle, bacteria, pH. decreaser, skin protector. Waited 4-5 weeks and started adding characins,
cories, algae eater, plants, caves, had temp at 83F.

I tested every morning and finally gave up. pH stayed at 7.5 I then added the cichlids, lilies, anubias and bog wood plus a ton of aquatic peat.

Deaths began almost immediately-I was most affected by the death of my
ancistrus, Golda. The characins are fast but well behaved. I feed small amounts several times a day-live, frozen and flake.

I began replacing one gallon per day once the fish went in. I have three filters-top Eheim, outside and water polisher. Last fish added were three wattley discus-the green died about two weeks later. The deaths have stopped but it has left me pretty miserable.

The hose was necessary and is guaranteed drinkling water safe. I couldn't
have saved up 150 gallons R/O-no space-now with new 100 gals per day I
will start changing 30% daily. After a month of good health I will order 3 more discus from Jack. I have a large order coming from Neil-apistos,
crenicara, cleithracara, laetacara- then if they make it I'll get the new discus which I just love.

Have a happy holiday.

 

[farm41]

Sounds like the tank was not cycled to me. Just takes time, not store bought products. It can take up to 6 weeks for this to happen, and can recycle if the process is interupted.

Add the fish slowly, and do test for nitrite and ammonia before adding more fish. If either are present, don't add fish.

 

[apistoguitarra]

Yeah, I definetely don't think a Ph of 7.2 to 7.5 is going to kill off cacatuoides and agassizi. Sounds like something else to me. I find that when setting up a new tank Stress Zyme works very well to establish beneficial bacteria (it's made by the same company that makes stress coat).

David

 

[aspen]

boy, i'm sorry to read your that post. it is so easy to lose soft water sensitive species, many things will cause such a thing. i have never lost that many fish altogether, but i can imagine how that feels.

as others have said, i believe that yours is either a water problem or multiple water problems, or a bacterial etc problem brought in with any one of the huge numbers of fish that you've listed. in any case, you had a LOT of fish in there, while you were solving your 'high ph' issues. but to be honest, my ph is higher than yours and i've had luck keeping most of the species that you've listed in plain tapwater.

if it were me, i would cut back the numbers, and stop worrying about ph, instead concentrating on keeping steady water hardness values at gh 4, kh 2, and see how that goes for you, and age all new tapwater with r/o for 24 hours. then WATCH the water go into the tank and observe any stress in the fish. lightly bleach and let thoroughly dry your water reservoir once in a while. crap can build up in there. try and stop shuttling in new fish, and excercise a practice of strict quarentine. ie, be more careful and conservative, and watch the fish more closely for signs of ill effects from your new water. if you are using co2, then you need to do smaller more frequent water changes, to avoid the ph swings from the new water. remember the co2/ph chart goes out the window if you are adding too many things to your water. ie, you could have dangerous levels of co2 and not necessarily know it until it is too late.

the time honoured KISS method works well for me (keep it simple stupid) and i tend in that direction as much as possible.

good luck, rick

 

[Blackshark667766]

Multiple deaths

:cry: All wrong: this sounds like a crime. I was a cop for six years in one of the hardest parts of London, bar one, you could ever hope to avoid.
Someone has poisoned your fish. I will stake my life, reputation and
miserable cojones on it,

My instinct tells me to say nothing,

Bye: C.U later.
[email protected]



Nick