My aquarium disaster

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adrideh

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 19, 2009
21
0
0
Jakarta
Hi all,

I just had a disaster in my new tank setup, and I really wonder why....

I have kept several fish for a while now :
2 arowanas and 2 Leopard catfish
And I kept them in a 150cm * 50cm * 50cm aquarium for about 8 months already. The fish were getting big, and doing just fine.

A few weeks ago, I finished building my concrete wall tank measuring : 200cm (L) * 130cm (W) * 150cm (H). After the construction is finished, I started cycling the new tank and filter using some feeder goldfish for about 2 weeks, while doing a lot of water changing and a lot of aeration. A few goldfish died, and most of them still alive after 2 weeks of cycling and water changing.

After the cycling, I started to move the catfish as well as the arowanas, and they seem happy. Although the catfish are showing unusual behavior : swimming near the glass side of the aquarium endlessly, and the arowanas were doing fine, swimming sometimes on the top, and sometimes on the bottom.

After a few days, 1 of my aro suddenly died... The sad thing is that aro is a 35cm super red aro (my favorite), 2 days after that, 1 of my catfish died.... And today, the other catfish and the other aro dead... DISASTER !!!!

The goldfish still lives though...

Just for addition information, my water parameters are :
Ph 7.5
TDS 210
Temperature 27-28 degrees C

Would someone please help me ? This incident has really frustrated me and I really really need help....

Thanks in advance !
 
thanks for the concern... I don't think it's the goldfish, since I've been feeding them with the goldfish from the same farm for some time now.

Could it be the water depth ? Maybe the water pressure stressed them out ?
 
check the oxygen levels in your tank... is the concrete sealed? concrete can leach chemicals into your water and kill your fish... being that goldfish are so hardy, they may be able to survive it.
 
That would be my question too - is the concrete sealed? Not only can it leach chemicals, but it can also leach salt (it's called Efflorescence) - enough might have been harmful? I dunno how likely that is, just thought I would toss that out there since its concrete + water
 
Also, what are your nitrate readings and ammonia readings? Two weeks sounds like a rather short cycle with a few goldfish and then bumped up to 4 large fish. It could have been an ammonia spike as your system was not mature and the goldfish are much hardier then the other two species and so they survive.

Test you water.
 
i second that
 
cockroach;3882642; said:
Also, what are your nitrate readings and ammonia readings? Two weeks sounds like a rather short cycle with a few goldfish and then bumped up to 4 large fish. It could have been an ammonia spike as your system was not mature and the goldfish are much hardier then the other two species and so they survive.

Test you water.
Click to expand...

Yup that's what I was thinking Too. It took me a month to cycle my 55 gal. You should use pure ammonia not fish to cycle a tank. That way you can add more ammonia then the gold fish could make. The more ammonia the more bactiera you will have.

Do you have the old filter from the established tank? Anyway you could hook it up to the new set up?

Or put all your fish back in the old tank. Run the new filter with the old one on the establisht tank. Then move everything old and new filter to the new tank. Then it should be good. But you might already know all about that.
 
So far most everyone seems to be hitting on a lot of good ideas for why this disaster may hae occurred. To add my 2 cents worth.....I think that the concrete may be the ultimate culprit. I make rocks for reef tanks using a concrete base and I "cure" all my rocks for at least six weeks, changing my water out daily and using a gallon of vinegar in with right around 40 gallons of water at least once a week.
However with the opinions registered above, there could be combinations of any or all of the above. Good luck with figuring it all out. Sorry to hear about the losses.
 
My money is on the concrete. Koi Keepers always talk about it. Hard to deal with sometimes.
 
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