My geophagus/Uaru tank is still showing below 10 for nitrates but something's going on in there. It's persistent, so I'm really trying to nail down what it is.
A while back a satanoperca Red Lip started getting some HitH and what looked like white zits. Nitrates were 5 and no other fish was affected. It started clamping a bit so I isolated it and treated with metro. A week later it was all better. I was proud of myself.
More recently, my orangehead male got swim bladder issues and was belly up for a week. Same treatment - isolation and metro - and he got better. He's still not 100% but he's doing OK. I put him back in the main tank but behind a divider, just to be sure he's not going to get picked on.
Given that he had been swimming oddly for a while before that, dating back to the time that the red lip got sick, plus a leucosticta started looking strange, stressed, and had stringy poop (though possibly due to being hungry - haven't seen it again since), I started treating the entire big tank with metro. I also fed the jungle Metro food.
But it's persistent. The red lip is getting white zits again. An Uaru has a spot on its side. The male orangehead and another are not getting better, and none of the orangeheads are showing their color.
The water quality is fine, but it does seem a bit stale to me - as if the filters aren't filtering things as well mechanically. I've moved, and they're still at the old place, so it doesn't get the same care. That said, I did daily water changes for a while a few weeks back and nothing changed. I also did a good deep clean on one of the FX5s, which increased flow nicely, but had no effect on anything else, including my thinking that mech filtration was poor.
Obviously something is going on - and now it seems to be resistant to the metro, which has gone through maybe 5 full tank doses (that's a lot of metro). I've got to move the fish and they'll be upgrading to a 300 gallon, so that might help, but on the other hand, I'm very concerned that the stress from the move might make them worse.
Any idea what could be causing this? I haven't lost any fish yet and I've always been on top of things with this tank. No big changes in nitrates, temp, pH, or anything like that. So I'm a bit confused by this.
A while back a satanoperca Red Lip started getting some HitH and what looked like white zits. Nitrates were 5 and no other fish was affected. It started clamping a bit so I isolated it and treated with metro. A week later it was all better. I was proud of myself.
More recently, my orangehead male got swim bladder issues and was belly up for a week. Same treatment - isolation and metro - and he got better. He's still not 100% but he's doing OK. I put him back in the main tank but behind a divider, just to be sure he's not going to get picked on.
Given that he had been swimming oddly for a while before that, dating back to the time that the red lip got sick, plus a leucosticta started looking strange, stressed, and had stringy poop (though possibly due to being hungry - haven't seen it again since), I started treating the entire big tank with metro. I also fed the jungle Metro food.
But it's persistent. The red lip is getting white zits again. An Uaru has a spot on its side. The male orangehead and another are not getting better, and none of the orangeheads are showing their color.
The water quality is fine, but it does seem a bit stale to me - as if the filters aren't filtering things as well mechanically. I've moved, and they're still at the old place, so it doesn't get the same care. That said, I did daily water changes for a while a few weeks back and nothing changed. I also did a good deep clean on one of the FX5s, which increased flow nicely, but had no effect on anything else, including my thinking that mech filtration was poor.
Obviously something is going on - and now it seems to be resistant to the metro, which has gone through maybe 5 full tank doses (that's a lot of metro). I've got to move the fish and they'll be upgrading to a 300 gallon, so that might help, but on the other hand, I'm very concerned that the stress from the move might make them worse.
Any idea what could be causing this? I haven't lost any fish yet and I've always been on top of things with this tank. No big changes in nitrates, temp, pH, or anything like that. So I'm a bit confused by this.
