dking271

I have had been dealing with several issues in my main community tank and finally had to do a complete tear down.

1st - I had a pond snail infestation in my cannister filter. I have never seen any in the tank, and feed my Pleco different veggies at least once a week.

2nd - One of the plants that I added several months ago, must have had damselfy eggs on it. I have been removing damselfly nymphs for a few weeks. I have removed well in excess of 50 of the little buggers. More than twenty were inside the filter.

3rd - My Blue Rams have been trying to breed in this tank, and they have to relentlessly keep others away from their eggs. My cories come from all side once they know there are eggs to eat. The stress of the last spawning, may have triggered some type of fungus on my Rams.

4th - I had to treat the tank, and chose to use Lifeguard from Jungle labs, knowing I was going to lose my cycle. Meds worked real fast, but it knocked out the nitrifying bacteria fast as well. We have been doing 50% water changes for the last few days.

Today, I did a two 50% changes today, replaced all media in my cannister filter and, did a major gravel vac (with plants and decorations removed). I think I finally got rid of all the nymphs in my tank, and the snails in my filter. I replanted the tank, replaced the water, seeded the filter, and added Safestart to get this thing going again. I have a breeder tank set up for the Rams, that is almost cycled. If all goes well, I will have my Rams in the new tank by the end of the weekend. While I'm not happy about having to re-cycle my tank, I am happy all fish are doing well.

witt0018

you sound like your having a real time of it. Probably a bit late to say this now, but you should was all plants thoroughly before you introduce them.

I had a major snail infestation in my tank, from a plant, I've always avoided chemicals in my tank, for the reason that you have found with your bacteria, so I introduced a couple of clown loaches, now no more snails. The ones in the canister, I just scraped out, and eventually there were no more.

I'm surprised the nymphs weren't eaten, some fish love them, perhaps I would have looked into a fish that would have eaten them, and introduced one of them, even if it was just to solve the problem, and then found a new home for it.

Glad your rams are OK, it is very difficult to breed in a community tank, good luck with the future breeding.

Trev

pepetj

Tough times! Glad you're working things out well!

I have dealt with less difficult times while having a tank finishing the cycle but that was still not there (the final two or three days of nitrite fade down seemed like forever).

It's stressful to go through, but I guess you made good choices given the circumstances, and, you and your fish are OK.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

dking271

All is well in my tank again. I do usually rinse and check my plants, but I think I may have put some Anacharis without rinsing totally. I managed to get this tank cycled in less than a week using Safestart. I did a routine waterchange and gravel vac, and not one sign of a damselfy nymph. As for fish eating these things, I have four large Angels that would no doubt eat them in this tank. For all I know, they have been. I just think these little guys were sneaky enough to evade capture.

As for adding new plants, I think I may start using a bleach dip.