Hey all,
Hoping for some advice here before our LFS opens up in a few hours...
I have a 55 gallon tank with a Reticulated (Teacup) Freshwater Ray. We've had her for nearly exactly 7 years, in the same tank. Our only other "constant" fish have been 2 Yoyo Loaches, 2 dwarf plecos (one Clown, one Bristlenose) and a rasbora. We had other fish over the years, tetras, gouramis, rams, but she was just eating them all.
It's set up with a Eheim Eco 60, and we have a bubble strip on a whisper motor in there too. Substrate is sand, which leads me to my issue.
My mom is shutting her tank down this summer so we wanted to take some of her top-dwellers that would likely be too big for Ray (we call her Taco) to eat. We figured we would take her plants first, get those established (Taco has never done well with plants, always uprooting them, so we haven't had any for a while), but we should top up the sand first to make sure they stay down. We've been low on sand for a while throughout water changes (but, we have introduced new sand in the past 3 or 4 times).
We bought Freshwater friendly sand, that was wet-ish in the bag (we were told it had what it needed in it to add to the tank). We soaked it for about a day to prevent black water, and added it as we normally would have.
The problems started with a pleco dying. They were older from a previous tank (about 10 years old), so we thought perhaps it was his time. Then Taco started to not eat... We were feeding her 3-4 bloodworm cubes a night, the loaches would eat them too and the plecos got 2 small tabs. We've always done weekly 25% water changes, which we didn't change. We tested the water, ammonia and nitrites were 0 ppm, but nitrates were maxed out. Our "fish guy" said to keep just doing our water changes and testing, adding emergency levels Prime to the water (and our usual salt doses we do weekly), but nitrates aren't the worst.
She would end up eating 1 cube every 3 or 4 days for about a week. Then a loach died. We tested again, same results. Still eating the same, very little. Then the other loach died on Sunday. We took our water into the LFS to see if we were missing something. They tested it, came up with 0.6-0.8 ppm nitrites this time. They gave me their brand of "Tank Buster" (which, it's worth noting this guy is really our local expert, he's helped my mom countless times) and said Taco should be fine, she's just stressed because of the levels. Do another 25% change and use the whole bottle of this stuff, you can't overdose. We did just that.
This morning, we wake up to find Taco on her back. We thought she was gone... My husband went to scoop her out only to find her flip herself over! We were (semi) relieved. We just did a 25% change, adding Prime. We're waiting for the LFS to open to get more Tank Buster.
Any thoughts in the meantime? Sorry for the length, didn't want to leave anything out.
Hoping for some advice here before our LFS opens up in a few hours...
I have a 55 gallon tank with a Reticulated (Teacup) Freshwater Ray. We've had her for nearly exactly 7 years, in the same tank. Our only other "constant" fish have been 2 Yoyo Loaches, 2 dwarf plecos (one Clown, one Bristlenose) and a rasbora. We had other fish over the years, tetras, gouramis, rams, but she was just eating them all.
It's set up with a Eheim Eco 60, and we have a bubble strip on a whisper motor in there too. Substrate is sand, which leads me to my issue.
My mom is shutting her tank down this summer so we wanted to take some of her top-dwellers that would likely be too big for Ray (we call her Taco) to eat. We figured we would take her plants first, get those established (Taco has never done well with plants, always uprooting them, so we haven't had any for a while), but we should top up the sand first to make sure they stay down. We've been low on sand for a while throughout water changes (but, we have introduced new sand in the past 3 or 4 times).
We bought Freshwater friendly sand, that was wet-ish in the bag (we were told it had what it needed in it to add to the tank). We soaked it for about a day to prevent black water, and added it as we normally would have.
The problems started with a pleco dying. They were older from a previous tank (about 10 years old), so we thought perhaps it was his time. Then Taco started to not eat... We were feeding her 3-4 bloodworm cubes a night, the loaches would eat them too and the plecos got 2 small tabs. We've always done weekly 25% water changes, which we didn't change. We tested the water, ammonia and nitrites were 0 ppm, but nitrates were maxed out. Our "fish guy" said to keep just doing our water changes and testing, adding emergency levels Prime to the water (and our usual salt doses we do weekly), but nitrates aren't the worst.
She would end up eating 1 cube every 3 or 4 days for about a week. Then a loach died. We tested again, same results. Still eating the same, very little. Then the other loach died on Sunday. We took our water into the LFS to see if we were missing something. They tested it, came up with 0.6-0.8 ppm nitrites this time. They gave me their brand of "Tank Buster" (which, it's worth noting this guy is really our local expert, he's helped my mom countless times) and said Taco should be fine, she's just stressed because of the levels. Do another 25% change and use the whole bottle of this stuff, you can't overdose. We did just that.
This morning, we wake up to find Taco on her back. We thought she was gone... My husband went to scoop her out only to find her flip herself over! We were (semi) relieved. We just did a 25% change, adding Prime. We're waiting for the LFS to open to get more Tank Buster.
Any thoughts in the meantime? Sorry for the length, didn't want to leave anything out.
