Hi nitrates help

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weewane

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 24, 2009
40
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newport news,VA
Ok here is the deal, I have a 40 gal breeder tank with a big feeder goldfish approx 8in long, a 4 spotted pim cats 3in ,a flying fox 2in, a gold nugget pleco 4in and a 2 clown plecos 2in. I finished dinner tonight and looked in the tank and dern if I did not find 2 of my pim cats were dead. and my other fish looked stressed. I check my water and everything is good except my nitrates they were up to between 40ppm and 80ppm. So I started doing a large water change of approx 60-70%. I waited a hour and rechecked and I get the same reading. 2 weeks ago I checked water and I was at 10ppm. I have not added anything to the tankin months and do weekly 20% water changes. What could be causing this and what should I do?
do you think the high nitrates caused the passing of the cats, and strees lookin the other fish.

Ohh none of the fish showed any signs of strees prior to today that I noticed. And the tank and most of the fish have been up and running for over a year.
 
Has your feeding regime changed any in the past week? Excess food can lead to bad water. Have you changed filter pads in your filter recently? That can cause a jump in your levels....I learned this myself not too long ago.

Keep doing big water changes. If you have it, don't be shy about dosing the tank with SeaChem Prime. It will help treat nitrates. Nitrates shouldn't be too big of a worry though, its your nitrite thats a killer. How does that look? How about your ammonia levels? pH?
 
Ok well I just woke up and bad news. My gold nuggett died threw the night. and one more pim cat is in serious distress. I checked everything again just not and it is as follows

ph. 6.6
nitrite 0
nitrate 40ppm
ammonia 0

I change my filter about once a month, no change in diet, temp or anything else. Fish are showing no signs of any disease. I dont know what to do but the hole tank is crashing
 
40 gallons and what kind of filtration? When you said you change the filters monthly I'm assuming filter pad, so you have a HOB bio wheel setup? tricky at best to alternate the pad changing to keep enough BB alive to keep up with the Bio-load...Goldfish are huge in the waste dept. I have a 50 gal and have a cascade 1500 and a emperor 350 and sometimes it's barley enough for my stock of Orandas...

6.6 ph seems low from the tap, I would also suspect the test kit, alot of times they go bad and give false readings...a new test kit might be in order...

Are they any outside contaminants that might be getting in...room spray, Fabreeze etc?
 
i agree with zennzzo-if you have a bio wheel type filter, and you replace the filter you are getting rid of quite a huge chunk of your bb. btw its a waste of money to replace those filters so much-you should just get a bucket of tank water and wring it out in there and put the media back in the filter (if its some kind of pad). i learned along ago that replacing those pads i was just wasting my money-.

i would get rid of the goldfish-its just a poop machine. and do weekly waterchanges of 50 percent. don't ever pull out all of your bio media and replace it at the same time-or your tank will cycle.

and like Dr Joe said-test your tap water.
 
No I dont think any outside contaminent are getting in. I have a full top, and dont sprey anything in that room they are kept in. yes I have a HOB marineland 200. yes I only change the filter once a month or when it gets clogged up. The test kit is not old I bought this master kit approx a month ago it is a API kit.

I did just take my clown plecos and moved them into another tank I have to try to save them, and moved my remaining spotted pims into my hospital tank.

Do you know anything else I could check or do at this point to try to save the tank?
 
Have you added any new fish lately? I added a neon tetra to my tank that had Neon Tetra Disease and it wiped out nearly every neon and my angels. If you've introduced a new fish recently it's possible it was ill.
 
I put the l 81 gold nugget in the tank about 2 months ago. other than that nothing has has been added in there for over a year. Also when I put the GN in there I had a reg pleco I took out so he was a replacement.
Just took my water into the LFS and had them test everything and all came back good except nitrate was still a little high, they told me it may be a parasite and sold me some Mardel coppersafe and said to treat the tank and hope that is it. But they could not think of anythingelse that would cause it.
As a side note I moved the pims into the hospital tank and one is looking better but one is in bad shape. he is barly moving and is losing his slyme coat, it is peeling off in layers
 
Not to diss your LFS but they all are in the business to make money...get your own fresh test kit and test your own water...
If you introduced nothing new then how could you get a sick tank so bad it offed some fish...IMO it's still got to be in your parameters...what is the filtration you are using?
edit: That GN came from the LFS or another one of your own tanks?
 
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