I've lived in my current house for almost four years. For the first two years I had no issues, then everything went to hell. Now one day I'll have clear water from the tap, the next day it will be murky and yellow, then the next day it'll be neon yellow like watered down Mountain Dew. I've posted about this before and several people looked into my city's water quality reports, and said everything looked normal. Whether or not they're adding something that they aren't admitting is another question entirely but I'll just stick to what I know.
Several months ago, most of my SA cichlid pairs quit spawning. I had severums, Krobia, and a few other species that spawned weekly and I was raising tons of fry. One day, all that ground to a halt. Then mysteriously all the fish in my 210 gallon community started to develop rapidly spreading HITH. I treated them with metro, dewormed them, did daily water changes, added new filters, etc. but to no avail. In the past several months I've lost my Hoplarchus psittacus, all of my large Geophagus (both winemilleri and brachybranchus), and several smaller, sensitive fish like Ivanacara idoketa and Mikrogeophagus altispinosa. Inexplicably, I have other sensitive fish in the house like Dicrossus foirni and Enigmatochromis lucanusi and they seem unfazed.
My current water tests at pH 7.6, GH 7, KH 5, with 0 - 5ppm nitrates straight from the tap. I dose every tank with Prime during water changes as I always have because my city uses chloramine.
The odd part now is that my nitrate skyrockets seemingly overnight. Let's take my 210 gallon tank, for example. The tank is filtered by an FX5 and a large 40 gallon wet-dry. This tank used to house 16+ adult fish including severums, chocolate cichlids, Laetacara, Mesonauta, etc. and it ran fine with no issues for two years. I did one massive water change (80 - 90%) every week, cleaned the filters a couple times a month, and all was fine. Now the tank houses four severums, a pike cichlid, a rhino pleco, and three Pelmatochromis nigrofasciatus. I can do a 90% water change and test the nitrates to find a reading of 10ppm. The very next day I can test it and it'll be between 40 - 80 ppm. If I wait a week before the next water change, the test kit goes into the red. This happens with one light feeding of pellets per day. The tank is not densely stocked at all. I cannot figure out what's going on. I have vacuumed out most of the sand, cleaned all the filters, and even removed the fake floating plants I had, thinking maybe they were leeching something into the tank.
Another tank is my 150 gallon community in my living room. It houses four severums, three Acaronia, and four Krobia guianensis. Again, this tank is filtered by a wet-dry, an FX5, and an AC110. I also have three pothos plants in the tank. After three days, the nitrate goes from 10ppm at water change time into the red (150ppm+ according to the test kit).
I have never seen these levels before in the four years that I've lived here. I'm wondering if something can cause this? The test kits are not past their expiration date and they always test normally when I check clean tap water or bottled water.
Another issue I've seen lately is that my Heroina isonycterina fry are growing up with deformed pectoral fins. A friend thinks it's because of a mineral deficiency in the water. I have never seen it in all the thousands of fry I've raised over the past few years. Now suddenly it's every spawn, from every pair, regardless of how many water changes I do.
I'm ready to throw up my hands and tear all my tanks down. I have no idea what else to test for, or how to combat the issues I'm having. I've looked into whole house filtration but it's a huge investment and I don't even know what's causing the problem to know if the filtration will fix it. I'd hate to invest a ton of money into installing that only to continue these issues. At this point I am having to do 75%+ water changes on my 210 gallon every other day just to keep the nitrates under 40ppm and that is ridiculous.
Any ideas? What am I missing?
Several months ago, most of my SA cichlid pairs quit spawning. I had severums, Krobia, and a few other species that spawned weekly and I was raising tons of fry. One day, all that ground to a halt. Then mysteriously all the fish in my 210 gallon community started to develop rapidly spreading HITH. I treated them with metro, dewormed them, did daily water changes, added new filters, etc. but to no avail. In the past several months I've lost my Hoplarchus psittacus, all of my large Geophagus (both winemilleri and brachybranchus), and several smaller, sensitive fish like Ivanacara idoketa and Mikrogeophagus altispinosa. Inexplicably, I have other sensitive fish in the house like Dicrossus foirni and Enigmatochromis lucanusi and they seem unfazed.
My current water tests at pH 7.6, GH 7, KH 5, with 0 - 5ppm nitrates straight from the tap. I dose every tank with Prime during water changes as I always have because my city uses chloramine.
The odd part now is that my nitrate skyrockets seemingly overnight. Let's take my 210 gallon tank, for example. The tank is filtered by an FX5 and a large 40 gallon wet-dry. This tank used to house 16+ adult fish including severums, chocolate cichlids, Laetacara, Mesonauta, etc. and it ran fine with no issues for two years. I did one massive water change (80 - 90%) every week, cleaned the filters a couple times a month, and all was fine. Now the tank houses four severums, a pike cichlid, a rhino pleco, and three Pelmatochromis nigrofasciatus. I can do a 90% water change and test the nitrates to find a reading of 10ppm. The very next day I can test it and it'll be between 40 - 80 ppm. If I wait a week before the next water change, the test kit goes into the red. This happens with one light feeding of pellets per day. The tank is not densely stocked at all. I cannot figure out what's going on. I have vacuumed out most of the sand, cleaned all the filters, and even removed the fake floating plants I had, thinking maybe they were leeching something into the tank.
Another tank is my 150 gallon community in my living room. It houses four severums, three Acaronia, and four Krobia guianensis. Again, this tank is filtered by a wet-dry, an FX5, and an AC110. I also have three pothos plants in the tank. After three days, the nitrate goes from 10ppm at water change time into the red (150ppm+ according to the test kit).
I have never seen these levels before in the four years that I've lived here. I'm wondering if something can cause this? The test kits are not past their expiration date and they always test normally when I check clean tap water or bottled water.
Another issue I've seen lately is that my Heroina isonycterina fry are growing up with deformed pectoral fins. A friend thinks it's because of a mineral deficiency in the water. I have never seen it in all the thousands of fry I've raised over the past few years. Now suddenly it's every spawn, from every pair, regardless of how many water changes I do.
I'm ready to throw up my hands and tear all my tanks down. I have no idea what else to test for, or how to combat the issues I'm having. I've looked into whole house filtration but it's a huge investment and I don't even know what's causing the problem to know if the filtration will fix it. I'd hate to invest a ton of money into installing that only to continue these issues. At this point I am having to do 75%+ water changes on my 210 gallon every other day just to keep the nitrates under 40ppm and that is ridiculous.
Any ideas? What am I missing?
