# A study in predictable errors...



## Rhab (Dec 18, 2009)

I got a 90 gal tank a month and a half ago, got a canister filter rated for a 160 gal tank placed a sand substrate let it run for a day or two and then added a few cory’s to cycle it.

I have since learned of the fishless cycle and how it is a superior method, I guess the book I got from BMV was rather dated.

After a three week period after testing I felt the tank had cycled. And so I added a large 6” featherfin catfish and a 5” Bichir. Sadly it seems I was wrong, fish got finrot, nitrites and nitrates spiked and the bitchir died. 

The whole calamity started when I did a 30-40% water change (it was planed as 15% but I got distracted and drained more water than I had planned). In retrospect I added an insufficient amount of dechlorinator following the “water change of death”.

I believe that I also neglected to give the tank sufficient time to cycle. I added an “organic” finrot/fungus treatment(active ingredient is naphthoquinone), which I just found out may kill off the biological filtration. 

I have also learned that a sand substrate is not ideal for plants and the colour is too light for my taste. I love the idea of using peat moss or a commercial planted aquarium tank base but I hate the idea of dredging out 80lbs of waterlogged sand (which may yet still harbour some beneficial bacteria).

My goal is a dark bottomed richly planted tank with a butterfly fish, two leaf fish a small bitchir and the featherfin.

My current state is a pallid featherfin, some small fish and poor water quality. With a sand base 1-3" thick

My questions are,

1, Do I remove some of the sand and add an additional substrate or just bite the bullet and change out the whole thing? If I do that can I put the fish in a bucket with a bubbler? How much turbidity can they tolerate?

2, This water quality thing how dire is the situation? When tested the levels are always over what is recommended. I’m doing 10% water changes ever 48hours but it doesn’t seem to help much. 

3, I don’t have a hospital or quarantine tank because, well frankly the wife has put her foot down on “aquarium space”. How necessary are they? If I get one it’s sure to mean a summer vacation to the inlaws!!!!!

4, Am I being unethical by keeping fish in these water conditions? If so what is my way ahead? I’m reluctant to grab a boning knife and going all French revolution on the fish but I don’t want them swimming around in a toilet bowl that’s out of control either.

Please forgive the spelling and formatting, I’m doing this on my phone over lunchbreak.

Regards

Rhab

“Making simple situations complicated since 1972”


----------



## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

Rhab said:


> 1, Do I remove some of the sand and add an additional substrate or just bite the bullet and change out the whole thing? If I do that can I put the fish in a bucket with a bubbler? How much turbidity can they tolerate?


Since you have a filter on there, it is responsible for the bulk of your filtration. Most likely what happened is when you added the two new fish, it overloaded the freshly cycled tank (too much fish too soon). Next time add slowly - 5 or 6 little cories make far less waste than a much large single fish.

You can syphon out the sand on subsequent water changes - sand is easy to remove like that. Replace your substrate as you see fit afterwards - I'd recommend eco-complete, but doing a large tank can be pricey - but there really isn't a good substitute for a good substrate.



Rhab said:


> 2, This water quality thing how dire is the situation? When tested the levels are always over what is recommended. I'm doing 10% water changes ever 48hours but it doesn't seem to help much.


Your levels should always be 0 ammonia and nitirites. Nitrates should be less than 10 ppm. Likely the bioload on your tank is too high still. Try to feed less, and make sure there is 0 waste after feeding (0 uneatne food).



Rhab said:


> 3, I don't have a hospital or quarantine tank because, well frankly the wife has put her foot down on "aquarium space". How necessary are they? If I get one it's sure to mean a summer vacation to the inlaws!!!!!


Fairly necessary, but also not. Most don't have a qt. If anything you can keep a second filter going on your main tank and use in the QT tank when necessary, and use a tank that is normally kept empty (and away in the garage or other similarly appropriate place).



Rhab said:


> 4, Am I being unethical by keeping fish in these water conditions? If so what is my way ahead? I'm reluctant to grab a boning knife and going all French revolution on the fish but I don't want them swimming around in a toilet bowl that's out of control either.


Meh, people have done worse, and are still at it with no intention to change. You're taking the steps to better the conditions, which I'm sure we'll be able to do soon. No need to end the misery mon frere, as things will get better.


----------



## Rhab (Dec 18, 2009)

How much eco complete for a 48" X 18"?

Thanks for the advice.


----------



## Darkblade48 (Jan 28, 2008)

It really depends on how thick you want your substrate to be. Are you looking for a flat surface, or a slope (i.e. 4 inches in the back, 2 inches in the front)?


----------



## bcarlos (Nov 19, 2009)

Try spot siphoning, too. The good thing about sand is that it's pretty easy to spot where the garbage in the tank is resting. 

In the future, definitely look to using the fishless method. I also always keep a sponge filter-- they do a great job of trapping and breeding the bacteria you need to cycle your tank.


----------



## Rhab (Dec 18, 2009)

A slope I think. A rolling terrain. Would it work if I layered it over the existing sand?


----------



## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

yes, it would, but unless it's the same/similar colour, it'll look funny as invariably it will get mixed up. Well, at least to me.


----------



## Rhab (Dec 18, 2009)

Yah I guess it would at that. It just sounds so much easier to scoop out half of the sand and then lay the Eco complete. sand mixed with black soil that's a naturel look?


----------



## bae (May 11, 2007)

Don't use either peat or black soil. If you want a dark color, get a dark colored sand or gravel. Peat and the organics in soil will 'blow' all over the tank and into your plants and make a mess and clog your filter. There is a technique of using soil under the other substrate in a planted tank, but the soil should have a low organic content and you shouldn't use this technique unless you understand it well, since done wrong, it can be a disaster.

Sand grows some plants quite well, but it works best with plenty of strong plant roots throughout to keep it from getting anaerobic, especially if it's more than an inch deep. One way to remove quantities of sand or other substrate is to cut the bottom off a square plastic jug and use it as a scoop. Submerge a small bucket and scoop the substrate into that. Needless to say, the plastic should never have been exposed to detergents or anything toxic. Ideally, use food grade plastic. I like the 2 liter soy milk jugs, especially the ones with the handle on the flat side rather than on a corner -- they make excellent scoops.

While the leaf fish will enjoy hanging out between plants, large active fish like a bichir and that catfish will mess up your aquascaping, damaging and uprooting your plants just by swimming around. You might consider planting jungle val (a large species of vallisneria) in pots with a layer of pebbles over the surface. Vallisnerias do well in our water and aren't very demanding of light. The long grass-like leaves will grow up and along the surface providing a nice lurk for the butterfly fish. By growing at the surface they won't require as much lighting as plants that grow further down in the water column.

You might consider going with floating plants entirely. In that case, you need only enough substrate to cover the bottom of the tank for aesthetics and to avoid confusing the fish. Floating plants need less light than plants far away at the bottom of the tank. Use sunken wood to break up sight lines so the fish can get out of each other's view, but leave space for active swimmers.

Far more important than substrate is lighting. You need on the order of 1 watt per gallon minimum to grow anything but the most undemanding of plants (e.g. java moss). 2 watts per gallon will grow more species, but if you want that lush 'Dutch aquarium' look, you need intense light, especially in a deep tank like a 90. Watts per gallon is a crude measure, but it's a reasonable first step in thinking about how much light you'll need for what you want to do. 

Before buying more fish, find out more about how large the fish will get, what their requirements are, and how likely they are to get along together without excessive aggression or bullying. A 90 gallon tank seems large, but it may not be large enough for more than one large fish. Also, the fish you are interested in can be very demanding as to diet -- some of them may require live fish to be healthy, which is expensive and inconvenient and exposes your fish to diseases and parasites brought in by the feeder fish. Large fish also require frequent large water changes since they produce a lot of waste, especially if they are eating high protein foods.

Corydoras catfish aren't compatible with fish that may try to swallow them whole. They can lock their fins, wedging themselves in a predator's throat, and kill it.

Water changes are always good, as long as the water is about the same temperature and hardness as the water in the tank. If you always use tap water plus something to remove chlorine and chloramine, you don't have to test for hardness. 50-75% at a time isn't out of line, especially if you have a problem with water quality. Your problem was not due to the 30-40% water change, but to massively increasing the bioload. Think of bioload as proportional the the weight or volume of the fish (and invertebrates). Consider those few cories compared to a couple of 5-6" fish, and you'll see how the filter bacteria would have needed some time to adjust to cope with the ten to twenty times larger bioload.

Perhaps you need to rethink this whole project. An elaborately planted tank isn't really compatible with large fish. The fish you are interested in are either ambush predators or active predators, get large, and may stress each other to death.


----------



## qwerty (Dec 15, 2009)

What I think happened...

You cycled with a few small fish, then you threw in an extra 11 inches of fish...

Bacterial populations will adjust to whatever their food source can sustain. So just because your tank is cycled, doesn't mean it can handle a maximum load of fish yet. You still have to slowly increase that bacterial population by introducing more and more fish over time.

However you also said you didn't use enough dechlorinator... This would kill some of the bacteria (if not all, absolute worst case scenario).

End result is you didn't have a high enough bacterial population to handle the waste output of all these fish, so they got fin rot. 

A few possiblities to consider...

- A quarantine tank is an extremely useful tool. Why risk infecting your entire aquarium with a diseased fish when the disease could be isolated in a 10gal tank and cured without harming the rest of your investment? They really are a useful thing to have.

- Perhaps try to return the fish to where you purchased them? Explain your situation. Who knows, they may be willing to take them back until you've sorted things out.

- If you just keep up with the water changes constantly, you should hopefully be able to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels low while your media finishes cycling, then add your fish very slowly.

- Try asking pet stores if they can spare any seeded media. This may help speed things up a bit for you.


----------



## Mr Fishies (Sep 21, 2007)

Rhab said:


> How much eco complete for a 48" X 18"?





Darkblade48 said:


> It really depends on how thick you want your substrate to be. Are you looking for a flat surface, or a slope (i.e. 4 inches in the back, 2 inches in the front)?


I have a 75 with that footprint, to get about 2" in the front and 3-3.25 in the back it took 6 bags. It pains me to say (at $30+ a bag) I should probably have used 7 but I was able "grade" quite a bit over to one corner for a stand of C.balansae. If you work with an assymetrical slope to one side like I did, 6 might be OK. The more area that has no plants or plants with shallow roots not needing more than 2" the more you can "cheat".


----------



## bob123 (Dec 31, 2009)

*errors*

Hi; I have expierenced the same thing and I did 50% water changes everyday for about a week got things back on line and only lost one fish.
Good luck.


----------

