omar

hi i been looking att ur site for sometime now but never joined in but i came into a problem i did a water change to my 29 gallon tank cause i had my german blue ram die before my eyes i checked my water and my ammonia was between 0.25 and 0.50, nitrites were 0.1, ph 7.5 temp 80-82 its hot denver now.so, i decided to a water change and i change the filter pads and the carbon on my fluval 105 and replace the carbon with zeo-carbon when i started to pump the filter this white soft peices came out i dont know what they were so, i tried taking as much as i could. when i came back from the lfs i found my sword tail getting eaten by my whisker shrimp i took him out and to my surprise it was still ALIVE i was shocked cause i my shrimp are big but never have done this before so i left to sears and to my surprise my baby swordtail which was probably 1/2 in was getting eaten TOO!!!!!!! what can be going wrong. in the tank theres glowfish 2 silver mollies 1 female sword 1 clown pleco 4 whisker shrimp and 1 cherry cherry shrimp help me please.

p.s i have ten gallon tank that i set up today but was set up last week and the gravel had water so bacteria can live so filled it with some of 29 gallon tank before i did water change and rest was tap water that i treated prime and its been inhabited by a 1" blue lobster and a tiny what can feed them besides flakes and sinkable pellets.

Lucy

Hi Omar, Welcome to Fish Lore

Sorry for the loss of your fish, I know it's hard.

With your readings, you need to do daily water changes until you get the ammonia and nitrites down to 0 with some nitrates showing.

Next time, just rinse the filter pad in old tank water and re use it, unless it's really falling apart. It holds quite a bit of benefical bacteria and you don't want to throw them out.
I've opted to not use carbon, it expires and can release nasty stuff back into the tank.

Given your readings, your 10g would do better with fresh treated tap water.

Was your tank cycled at some point? How long have you had it set up?

Good luck

pepetj

Wellcome Omar!
As Lucy suggested, daily partial water changes until the cycle is done. I'm not sure about the compatibility of whisker shrimps and fish. Sorry about this tragedy. As far as I know, whisker shrimps could/will be a threat to all your fish, despite their "small" appereance, I have read about incidents like this before -not sure if in fishlore or somewhere else. The blue lobster won't be a threat right away, but it will at some point, and probably require a bigger tank. IMO, you might need to set-up a species only tank for the whisker shrimps, but wait for the advice of someone who knows better. The little knowledge I have, was due to my interest in purchasing some young electric-blue crayfish (opted against it, in the end) to keep in a community tank. Unfortunately, no LFS sell shrimps -amano, red-cherry etc, but crayfish, in my country.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

omar

well the 29 gallon has been set up for 4 1/2 months and the whisker and all the fish were bought almost at the same time as for the lobster theyre in there 10 gallon all species tank

Lucy

Wow, something put you into a mini cycle, I guess.
Keep up the daily water changes and you should get back on track in no time.
I've never heard of that kind of shrimp, but if he were eating my fish alive, I'd take him back or get him another tank.
Good luck.

omar

no the whisker shrimp have been with my fish for a long time the reason i think is that the with stuff that came out of the filter got them sick and since the shrimp are scavengers they took advantege the blue lobsters are in there 10 gallon tank i heard that u can feed the egg shells so there shell gets hard is that thru cause the egg shells theyre made from calcium.

COBettaCouple

Welcome to Fishlore.

jdhef

omar

I have a fluval 205, so I assume that your filter is similar to mine. Did you recently change the out the Bio Max? That is basically where all the bacteria colonies grow, and when changing it out, you are not supposed to change it all at once, since you will have no bacteria in the new stuff and you'll go into a mini cycle.

Also, I would have thought that you would be able to just swish the filter pads in some used tank water to clean them, rather than needing to replace them. I'm not sure how much bacteria grows on them, but I think I would have only replace half the pads then waited a few weeks to replace the others.

Good Luck