Help i believe i mess up my tank's chemistry

[ChenYW]

Hi people, I setup my tank for 6month at first everything seem fine but slowly for some reason my fishes keep dying, i tried adding medication to kill whatever parasite that could kill my fishes then i add in new fishes out 18 fishes only 4 survive, fishes that died are oto,needlefish, royal farlowella catfish) and 6 snails died. I have a few plants in my tank.

my tank ph 6-8, i do weekly water, filter wool changes, chemical i add into the tap water (Azoo Nature Gro Plant Premium,API Stress Coat Water Conditioner,)


my setup (sorry i got no camera)





So what do i did wrong? are there anyway to fix it?

[Orky108]

You need to add dechlorinater to your tap water during WC. A good one to use would be seachem prime. Also there is no need to change your filter wools every weeks. By doing so you are actually removing all the beneficial bacteria. You should only wash and rinse your filter wool in your tank water. Do not wash them under tap water. Only change your filter wools when it break down and can no longer filter your water properly. Lastly do not do your WC and filter maintenance on the same day. Too much fiddling with the tank would kill off too much BB and cause the tank to go into reset mode

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[Realcaster]

I too think your tank have being reset everytime you change water and filter. Do a 50% water change to remove the medication and add water conditional to remove the chlorine and chromine. Buy some beneficial bacteria(BB) and dose some everyday. Feed moderately, even if the fish don't eat for 1 week, it will not die.

The water will turn cloudy in a few days, don't do water change, just does BB everyday. Some of your existing weaken fish may die, but the healthy fish will survive. You will notice When in about 2 weeks, your water will suddenly become clear over night. Dose BB for another 3 days and your have a stable tank. Clean your wool or ceramic every 3 months. and 20% water change every week.

your work now is just change the water weekly and feed the fish moderately once or twice a day. When you add fishes, add 2 fishes at a time so that BB have time to multiply and catch up with the bio load.

if your water condition is stable, your fish will unlikely fall sick and sick fish will recover by its own.

i typically quarantine new fishes only.

hope this helps.

[ChenYW]

You need to add dechlorinater to your tap water during WC. A good one to use would be seachem prime. Also there is no need to change your filter wools every weeks. By doing so you are actually removing all the beneficial bacteria. You should only wash and rinse your filter wool in your tank water. Do not wash them under tap water. Only change your filter wools when it break down and can no longer filter your water properly. Lastly do not do your WC and filter maintenance on the same day. Too much fiddling with the tank would kill off too much BB and cause the tank to go into reset mode

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Thanks for the reply, i thought filter wool should be change regularly?

[Orky108]

Nope. Unless its totally broken down and cannot be used anymore. Everytime u change it, you are basically throwing BB away. No need to do filter maintenance every week. Do it like once every 3 months or so.

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[ChenYW]

Nope. Unless its totally broken down and cannot be used anymore. Everytime u change it, you are basically throwing BB away. No need to do filter maintenance every week. Do it like once every 3 months or so.

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but how to remove all the black junks from the padding?

[Realcaster]

Just leave it alone

That is why I don't like to use overhead filter tray, can be unsightly and it smells

[Orky108]

Add some media under the wools. As you need to clean the wools more frequently. The media will help to retain bb

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[Urban Aquaria]

For the fine white filter wool, as mainly a mechanical filtration medium it does need to be changed out once it gets clogged up over time (ie, turns brown or black and you see the flow start to slow down)... most people will either change it for new ones every few weeks or every few months (depending on the amount of dirt it captures), or attempt to wash it regularly to extend its lifespan abit longer (but majority of the dirt will still be trapped in it due to the dense synthetic wool structure, so it tends to clog up faster and faster each time).

By default if you have a cycled tank with seasoned filter system, the changing of a white filter wool layer should not significantly impact the overall beneficial bacteria population in the filtration (unless its the only media in a filter or the tank is not cycled properly). The majority of beneficial bacteria should be living in the bio-media instead (which should occupy most of the filter). Any small percentage of bacteria in the white filter wool that were discarded should be easily re-populated by the existing bacteria populations.

Btw, when your fishes died, did they exhibit any identifiable signs of parasites or infections? Or were the deaths from unknown causes and you just dosed general medications as a preventative measure?

I also noticed you mentioned your pH is 6-8... any reason for the wide fluctuations in the pH levels?

In addition, have you tested the basic parameters like ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels in the tank? Even if you have run the tank for a few months, it might be going through spikes in those parameters without you knowing, perhaps accumulated over time due to too much bio-load. It'll be good to check so as to eliminate those as possible factors.

[fed949]

water change should be 25%

[Alfa]

I would change 50 % of the water. One week later you just change 25%. And add some BBI would change 50 % of the water. One week later you just change 25%. And add some BB