High ammonia, nitrite and nitrates

Sure! And go easy on the breakfast

 

Sounds good I'll let her know tomorrow no more dinner, or if she does feed him dinner maybe once a week instead from now on until I can come home and make sure it cycled before we up his diet.

Now to convince her we need a tank in the kitchen since the 5.5 is cute and I have the equipment for it we need the whole family involved in MTS amirite lol

 

Yeah! They shall all be assimilated!;D

 

yep, everyone in my house is infected with MTS. I just set up my 8th last night

 

Okay I am currently working on securing off campus housing for next semester. I will apparently have my own room with a key that I will be able to lock my room with when i'm not there. The complex is academically based and pet friendly. They are getting sub leasers together now since all current subleasers are graduating this semester so i'm not sure who I will be living with but i'm sure they will be fine with the fish (should I even mention it? idk) If I will be living there, I will be bringing the 10 gallon back with me and not the 5.5 gallon. I don't think the weight of that would be a huge problem.

Mom said he isn't glass surfing anymore today so it must have just been the activity in the kitchen that he was trying to see. I think the towel also helped.

 

That's great news. If you have your own room and key and its pet friendly then unless they ask for what pet you will be bringing (like on an application) I wouldn't worry about it.

If he continues to scratch and rub that would be a sign of parasites and I would treat him with liquid PraziPro a gentle anti-parasitic that's pre-mixed.

 

They will up your rent if you have pets about $50 not including the $500 pet contract (well I believe $300 gets returned back if no damage) but i'm sure a fish tank will be fine....I did ask previously when I almost signed for a single though but they said only fishbowls which turned me off so fast it scared me.

I will wait for her to send a video and see if he is scratching still. He likes to come up and get air and almost nosedive into the gravel and will glass surf and almost try to bite his tail, i'm not sure if he's a biter though since i've never seen him doing it and his tail has always look a bit rough. I don't think it's fin rot though

 

Why aren't they required to return the whole deposit???

 

Probably so it can appeal to us college kids who want to have pets but can't on our campus. It's ridiculous haha but I won't sign if they will charge me for fish. There's no reason to. I almost grabbed a single there so I could set up a 20 long but was afraid of getting charged for it since if they find it later they will up your rent and make you owe money for the months you had it before.

No way will I put him back in a fishbowl! I learned quickly and had to keep spending to upgrade his space

 

usually they don't require a deposit on small tanks.

as far as telling your room mates you have a fish tank- if its in your room and not in communal area, I wouldnt even mention it honestly.

around here, pet deposits are 100% nonrefundable, so that's no shock- its like that most places I have lived.

 

Just thought i'd post an update.

I am seeing someone Monday for the possibility of me moving into a single. The girls in that 4 person apartment never wrote me back and I am trying to avoid a lease. Most likely he has something for me though as he wouldn't make me come into town for the apartment and did say we would arrange a move. I do have 2 other leases i'm considering but i'd rather avoid it.

I did buy another bottle of TSS+ for the tank at home. I used one too small I think because the bottle I usually buy (well the same size as amazon) was upwards of $22 at that particular size. I will be possibly coming home next weekend not only to do the first water change but to just be away from here and now she really has nothing to mess with and I will add the new bottle then. His rips don't seem to be healing either from what i've seen in the videos, they aren't getting worse though..any suggestions?

I was really really thinking about what led up to the tank crash and i'm honestly thinking that her friend who hates me and likes to make drama decided to dump the bottle of nail polish remover with acetone into the tank the weekend her other friend was here. That would explain why the biofilm I had on my tank was really hard to get rid of even though I kept upping the flow, it might also explain why he was able to make such a huge nest (about 1/5 of the top of his tank) as the bubbles also did not disintegrate easily since the surface couldn't be agitated as the remover just hardened on the top. It also may explain his stressful behavior and nesting all weekend non stop and then the glass surfing later on when the remover started burning his gills. I doubt they would dump alcohol in it since that's too precious to our underage butts. I am planning to put some water in a cup and some remover and see what film forms on top over time once I have the time.

 

Do you know exactly what kind of nail polish remover it might have been? Acetone is completely soluble in water. There are other nail polish removing chemicals that aren't though.

 

It is the generic up and up brand from Target. The ingredients are Acetone and Denatonium Benzoate

 

Near as I can tell, both ingredients are water soluble. I should think you'd have noticed the smell of acetone anyway. It's pretty potent!

 

We did have a pretty bad odor coming from the tank that weekend which is why I did have to buy that carbon and the tank still has odor.

 

But acetone has a really distinctive smell, was it like that?

 

Does it smell like rotten eggs? Or like something burning but not wood burning? It made our room smell hot.

 

Not at all. Rotten egg smell tends to be the province of sulphur compounds.

 

hmm I'll have to keep thinking as to what it was. I never had bad tank odor until that weekend so it must have been alcohol

 

Any live plants in there?

 

No and I had also cut back on his feeding due to trying to get ammonia under control since my tap water naturally has 0.25 ppm in it so it wasn't from rotting food to my knowledge.

 

There may be a clue here: https://www.reference.com/world-view/household-products-contain-sulfur-921d96a21528271c

 

Just an update.

I got a single room! So I'll be moving at semester and the baby fishy will come back with me and i'm so excited! I'm also going home this weekend to see family and am wondering if I should change his water this Thursday instead of Sunday if that's okay? It has already passed a week since adding TSS+ and I did buy another bottle if the cycle failed. If everything is 0 except nitrates am I good to change the water?

 

I would, but is it a problem for your family to change it? They only have to change a little, right? If you don't have to change it I think that will be better to ensure the best results.

And congratulations!!! That's great news

 

I plan on changing it before I go back after Sunday because he would be going basically 3 weeks without a water change which feels like too long, especially while it was cycling. I would just rather be there in person to test water and make sure the cycle worked, but they don't have a problem with it once I bring the siphon home to help them so they don't have to use measuring cups lol

 

I did an immediate 30% water change in my 10 gal two days ago because of high levels. Now they are even higher today. Is another water change the answer?

pH is normal ~7.6

Ammonia: ~2-4ppm
Nitrite: ~2ppm
Nitrate: ~40

 

Can you please test your tap water for all of the parameters?

How long have you had the tank and did you cycle it before?

What do you have living in it?

 

Testing tap water now.

I've had it for about 4 months. Yes it was cycled before.

I have one betta (cycled with tank), 2 platies, two corydora, and one Africa Dwarf Frog

Tap water levels in this picture below

 

What size tank is this? Did you switch the filter media lately?

 

Did you recently add all the rest of the fish? Did you add them all at once or separately to allow the bacteria time to catch up?

Bettas are very low bioload fish so there would only have been a small population of bacteria needed but platies are messy and could have overwhelmed the bacteria and they're struggling to catch up.

 

Filter media as in the sponge things inside the filter? No I haven't. I got a new filter about a month ago.
I added the fish all at once except the betta. He was put in about a month ago.
I've heard they platies carry a large bio load. Should I get a larger filter? I currently have the Aqueon quiet flow 20

 

What size tank is this?

 

10 gal

 

Yeah, that's enough filtration.

Cories need a minimum of 20 gallons and need 6+ of it's own species in a tank, so I will rehome them.

What did you use to cycle the aquarium?

 

I was thinking I would rehome them or get a larger aquarium for everyone.

I just used fish food and the betta and tested it.

 

What kind of filter was in it before?

 

This was all before I knew what I do now and that still isn't much! Haha. I used test strips so they weren't accurate.

It was whatever filter came with the Top Fin tank.

 

And the cory catfish should be okay they only get about 3" max

And had you changed the media in the three months before you got a new filter?

Do you use a bacteria supplement?

 

Sorry about the double posts.
Yes I had changed it every two weeks as per what the PetSmart lady told me. But then I learned a bigger tank is better and changing it every 4 weeks is better.

Edit: yes I used a bacteria supplement

 

You were changing the carbon media every two weeks? Or changing water?