zowie717

If you look at my other threads, you will see the problems I have had for 2 months. well I thought everything was fine and the tank cycled IMO and I was down to 2 fish. 1 pleco, 1 pink gourami that made it through. everything was fine for 3 weeks. and bamm, my pinky died, stuck to the filter. No idea, I tested the water after found him, everything good.

So now i am afraid to put my 2 dwarf gourmais in there that have been QT for 2 weeks.

I dont know if i should start all over with this tank or not? any suggestions.

Jonah

What are the water parameters for the tank?

ammonia=
nitrite=
nitrate=
pH=

zowie717

Nitrite 0 , nitriate 20 , ammonia is reading from the liquid test kit 1 part per million which is acceptable per the kit because of my ph level. my hanging ammonia reading is showing SAFE.

zowie717

ph is from liquid test and i think it is between 7.2 and 7.6 that blue always hard for me to tell

Jonah

I am no Gourami expert but your tank looks cycled to me.

I would slow acclimatise the gouramis to the water from your new tank by gradually introducing water from the main tank to the QT tank over the course of a couple of hours taking small ammounts of water out of the qt tank ever 10 mins or so and replacing with water from the main tank

Then when you are ready to move the fish top up the main tank with conditioned water with some added StressCoat to the water to help the fish acclimatise.

Have you though about adding some easy care live plants like Java Moss etc to the tank? they will also help with removing organics from the water.

zowie717

I have but since I have the pleco, I didnt want him eating it. but I like the idea of real plants and have been looking at them.

Jonah

The pleco will not eat your plants, I have 4 or 5 different types spread over 3 tanks and none of them touch my plants.

Do you know what type of Pleco you have?

Shawnie

any amounts of ammonia means its not cycled yet. even if it is the "ammonium" that alot of ppl say is safer for fish than ammonia, it still should be 0 for a complete cycle no matter what your ph is ....so id wait to add anything until all the readings are 0 and under 20 for nitrates .....but you are close as you have a nitrate reading to begin with!!

docjr03

If you had earlier problems with water toxicity, the gourami may have been affected, and it may have just taken this long for it to expire. sorry for your loss. As far as starting over, not to be glib, but it seems you already have. It seems odd that you would be showing any ammonia at all with such an under-stocked tank at this point... I agree with Shawnie; I would wait until the ammonia test reads 0 before adding any more fish.

CWO4GUNNER

Agreed. Not only is any amount of ammonia indicate a cycle imbalance but the fact that you show 0 nitrates indicate a missing indicator that the byproducts or cycling bacteria is not present or lacking. Your statement of ammonia being only 1 PPM (deadly at .03 PPM) is a deadly understatement, especially with a PH of 7.6 NH3 ammonia is super deadly without detoxifyer which must be overlapped treated with water changes every 24 hours. No wonder your fish are dying. In order to have PH protection against ammonia your PH must be at a minimum 6.9 acidic to 6.5 but no lower. Even then you should be detoxing every 24 hours with water changes.

Belay my last, you posted 20 PPM Nitrates OK. Still any ammonia is an imbalance maybe due to over feeding or not vacing the tank during water changes, or a dirty filter. In any case detox and water change, vac, and clean your filter media in old aquarium water NOT tap.

zowie717

i do my water changes, do my tank vac and have not overfed. today i did a partial water change and before i did that i tested the water. the liqiud test kit said my ammonia was .025 it was so close to the 0 color but i erred on the side of caution and of course did a water change, added my conditioner and my prime. my ph though is still in the 7.2 to 7.6 range. and since i have had the tank i have been doing water changes every other day until a couple weeks ago and i would do them every couple days. then i added the tetra safe start which i was told from everyone on here not to do a water change for at least a week after adding that.

i am suppose to show 0/20 on the nitrates/nitrites correct? that is indication of my tank cycling with 0 ammonia. if i am suppose to drop to 0 ammonia then should i wait a couple days and add more tetra safe start or just keep doing water changes and testing and see.

CWO4GUNNER

Having a boat load of fish in my tank during my cycle (not recommended) I had tears in my eyes when my ammonia made it down to 1 PPM after 6 weeks through that bloody gauntlet. One thing I did that you apparently did not every 24 hours and sometimes every 12 hours was conduct water chnages, re-dose worn out detox, and test my water. But remember I'm a retired military man so I'm a bit overkill having 28 fish lives to protect it was like war games, so of course I was fanatical pulling out all the stops and tools like the toxicity tables. But at .25 ammonia your almost there and will be once nitrites are 0 as well then after that with the final couple water chnages and re-dose for good measure you'll be there in a couple more weeks. Heck this is week 8 for me and today everything was 0 except nitrates at 5PPM and I still put a couple bullets in the enemy's back for good measure by adding 5 mil/60ga dose of Prime. Tomorrow is my weekly 50% water change 1st in 8 days.

BlowPhish

I use the API master test kit and the color card is really hard to tell with the ammonia between .025 and .000. From what I have read .05 and up is harmful and will eventually kill fish. 2.0 is deadly within hours. What I am trying to say is that your ammonia is probably at .000 :P I do agree that your gourami was probably already well on its way from your previous problems. Now that you've been through this you'll be a better fish keeper! My only suggestion would be to take a long long time when you buy fish and examine them very thoroughly before you buy. Make your LFS employees earn their wages by picking out all your fish individually!

zowie717

i hope the ones i have in there will be okay. the pleco is only one from the orginal batch. and now my 2 DG. i put them in there over the weekend before i checked my thread. they were in QT for two weeks and i observed them daily to get to know them. the 1 is more agressive then the other and bigger. but they eat, and sometimes play and other tiems the bigger one will dart at the smaller one. but they pretty much stay in there own areas. so i will wait until adding any other fish for a good month. i just want it to cycle and quit having all these problems i had. and i dont trust the test kits, because 1 day it was 1ppm and then today it was .25. so i would rather just do the water changes and keep going so i dont mess it up thinking it cycled just yet... ; ) but i am praying it will cause i have been to heck and back and am trying very hard to do it right.

CWO4GUNNER

Just remember although water changes are important, you can water change but if you don't detox every 24 hours the fish will be poisoned anyway but you can skip a water change and detox and the fish will live. But If you detox and don't have good aeration oxygen can be depleted and the fish will die anyway. But even if you do all these things "water change, detox, and aerate" if you don't test and monitor your water condition and ammonia gets to 4PPM+ in combination with high PH say 8+, not even these things will keep your fish from dieing and PH has been known to spike during cycling causing super deadly NH3 to come out of otherwise detoxed ammonia. My point is like driving a car or flying a plan you have to have a grasp of the whole picture puzzle in order to keeps things together and make it work. Your there and the only one who can make the right decisions and take the right actions quickly and decisively when necessary. All the advice in the world cant substitute that fact. If you don't know the enemy and his weaknesses and take the hard but necessary steps to beat him, don't expect to win the war.

zowie717

just an fyi, my main tank after todays reading, Is cycled! ; ) . no ammonia and my nitrites/nitrates are 0/20-30 (not sure on the color). so hopefully the next tank will follow soon... ; ) so my question is how often do i need to continue testing the main tank, should i do it with my weekly water changes? or should i do partial water changes every month? I dont know how often to do it now. thanks

CWO4GUNNER

My tank which recently cycled has perfect numbers now and I still do complete readings once a day before feeding. As soon as I get a feel for a balanced tank I will probubly drop back to every 2 days.