quarterback13

10 days ago I added 4 clow loaches very small to my 72 gal . aquarium.
at that time my readings were amonia=0. nitrites=0. nitrates=5.0, pH=7.5

the following day I did my weekly partial water change and I also rinsed the white polishing pad in my canister filter

10 days later i lost all 4 new clowns plus 1 zebra danio, 1 cory, 1 pictus catfish, and 3 swords.

my readings today are amonia=less than .025 nitritres=0, nitrates=10. ph=8.2

why have amonia and nitrates and ph all risen . please help

rebeccmh

i'm sorry you lost all those fish
Did you rinse out the polishing pad in the old aquarium water or under tap water? if you rinsed under tap water then the chlorine would have killed off your bacteria throwing you into a mini cycle. it could also be that rinsing the pad made it difficult for your already established bacteria to adjust to the new bioload. those are just my thoughts, but i'm sure someone with more experience and knowledge will be able to tell you more...

dee34

i was just going to ask the same question

quarterback13

I rinsed in the aquarium water i had removed .

JoeSmo

How big were the clowns when you bought them? I know sometimes clowns are hard to keep alive when they are <2". And as far as your water chemistry, I am confused about that lol.

quarterback13

less than 2 inches

CHoffman

So sorry you lost your fish. that really is awful to deal with. I'm thinking that adding the clown loaches and rinsing your filter was to much for your benefical bacteria to handle all at once. It seems like you had a mini cycle. Clown loaches are very sensitive and will not do ok with any ammonia in the tank. So are cories. Danios are usually pretty hardy but you never know how high the ammonia actually got before it started to fall again. I would start doing daily 50% WC on your tank using Prime untill you have 0 ammonia. It shouldn't take too long. Then when restocking only add a small amount of fish at a time to make sure everything stays stable. So sorry again.

cerianthus

I dont think it was ammonia (NH3) which may have caused the death of clown loaches. pH is way too hiigh for new incoming clown loaches. I have kept clowns in Af Cichlids tanks but with some failures as some may adapt better than others. Smaller ones are not necessarily more sensitve than larger. What you consider smaller ones are not that young anyway. They are not fast grower. Maybe dead Clown loaches may have caused increase in NH3 which may have caused death of others, maybe.

Also clown loaches are notoriously vulnerable to ICH infestations which may have contributed to death of other fish and/or themselves
.
I would not do any pwc right after adding fish (unless in case of emergency) until well settle down to new environment. As most of you might know sudden drop in temp may trigger spreading of Ich infestation. By doing pwc may have caused such slight drop which may have triggered activation of dormant eggs/sapores/zygotes. I am not saying you have Ich infestation, a possibilities.

In the future, how about Q/T new samll clowns in water close to neutral and gradually alter the the pH to main tank. All you got to do is add water from main tank per pwc (10% perhapseven less). Of course both tank should have well matched temp.

After handling few thousands of these babys and kept quite a few myself, this is what I have learned.
Hope you can use this info to good use.

quarterback13

Thanks for imformation. I think it must have been the water change and cleaning of the filter. I just don't know what exactly was the cause of the increase in PH. It has always been steady at 7.5 . i will keep an eye on it next few days and hope it drops. I won't add any more fish until I am sure all is normal . So far the remaining fish all seem fine. Thanks all for info.