I have a 150 gal. I have a FX5 and a casscade 1500. temp is 79-80. water paramaters are usually 0 nitrite 0 ammonia and 60 nitrates. I usually to 50-60 gal water cahnges once a week. i noticed the fish breathing heavy last night so i did another 50 gal water change. I woke this morning and i lost 3 datnoids 8in 1 jardini 14 in 1 ghost knife 12in and a sabetooth tetra 8 in. i tested the water and the nitirites were 1 and the ammonia is 0 and the nitrates were 60. I have had this tank set for years and the fish were eating like champs. not sure is this is the right section. do i need more filtration? Also as info both filters are filled with ceramics and bio balls, thanks
Lost half my fish-help
- Thread starter Axle
- Start date
Nitrates do seem rather high. But given the fact you only introduced 50-60 gallons about a third of your tank volume it sounds to me like your local water could have a ton of ammonia or nitrite in it. I would age some faucet water for 24 hours and test it. If its high in ammonia or nitrite then thats most likely what happened.
another thing, if you do have chloramine in your water and do a water change and use a conditioner that just breaks the chloramine bond but doesnt bing the resulting free ammonia ,,you basically dose your fish in a high concentration of ammonia. for example there is a conditioner called API freshwater conditioner that breaks the chloramine bond but if you dont lock up the ammonia that is relesed(ammo lock) by breaking the chloramine bond you probably kill the fish. There is a product called ammo lock that can be used with the api conditioner to lock up the ammonia or you can use a conditioner called Prime by seachem that does it all. Also if you have chloramine and just use chlorine remover , the chloramine will probably kill your biological filter and then you get a ammonis spike from the dead bacteria and no bio filter,
I second the recommendation for prime water conditioner. I used it on all of my tanks (fw and saltwater) and luckily have had no problems to date.
You didn't do any painting in the area recently? I have heard that volatiles in the air can be quite toxic to fish as they dissolve easily into water.
You didn't do any painting in the area recently? I have heard that volatiles in the air can be quite toxic to fish as they dissolve easily into water.
Howdy,
That alone is a heavy stock for 150 gal. You've got some serious bioload in that tank, which leads me to the next point:
Yes. Your filters are insufficient and your fish finally outgrew the biocapacity of your tank as indicated by the spike in nitrites. FX5 is great at mech but sucks at biofiltration. Granted, the cascade has a decent volume, but you are wasting it with bioballs. bioballs have a surface area of 160 sq ft/cubic ft. Modern biomedia has > 135000 sq ft/cubic ft. You do the math and decide what's better and where you want to cut corners and go cheap. Maybe compare costs of biomedia to costs of 3 dats, a jar, gk, and sabretooth ...
Sorry to hear about your fish loss. But you desperately need to upgrade your filtration.
HarleyK
Axle;3037170; said:
That alone is a heavy stock for 150 gal. You've got some serious bioload in that tank, which leads me to the next point:
Axle;3037170; said:
Yes. Your filters are insufficient and your fish finally outgrew the biocapacity of your tank as indicated by the spike in nitrites. FX5 is great at mech but sucks at biofiltration. Granted, the cascade has a decent volume, but you are wasting it with bioballs. bioballs have a surface area of 160 sq ft/cubic ft. Modern biomedia has > 135000 sq ft/cubic ft. You do the math and decide what's better and where you want to cut corners and go cheap. Maybe compare costs of biomedia to costs of 3 dats, a jar, gk, and sabretooth ...
Sorry to hear about your fish loss. But you desperately need to upgrade your filtration.
HarleyK