My bichirs tank is stinky

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balton777

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 8, 2007
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Rowlett, Tx
As some of you may recall, I recently purchased 3 new polys from Toyin. When I first opened the delivery package, me and my wife both immediately noticed they had a very bad odor. I didn't think much of it at the time and put them in a 28 gallon quarantine tank. Today, I noticed the water stank with the same extra-strong smelly odor as when they first came out of the bag.

Is this normal with bichirs? Or is it becase they're in too small of a tank? Remember, I (temporarily) have two 15" polys and a 16" poly in a little 28g tank. It might be all ok when they go into the 265g tank.

I've been doing a 30% water change every other day and the water still smells awful. Not fishy, but like something died. :yuck::yuck::yuck:

Any suggestions?
 
Funky bacteria is all. Keep doing the water changes. Do you have a UV sterilizer you could put on the tank? (Inline on the filter return)

Increasing the oxygenation of the water should help too. What kind of filtration is on the tank? Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate levels? Water temp?
 
Funky bacteria? Because they're wild caught?

Is it anything that would harm the other fish when it's time to move them?

I mean it's not just smelly, it's soooooo rank.

Maybe I'll research a UV sterilizer.
 
balton777;1918643; said:
Funky bacteria? Because they're wild caught?
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of course not :grinno: i think he just meant that you have three big bichirs in a small tank that's probably underfiltered for the bioload you have. i've never had this problem, not even when i opened the shipping bag, so not sure what initially caused your situation.

have you tried adding activated carbon? may be that'll help.
 
most likely bacteria causing the odor. carbon in your filter only treats the symptom, not the cause.

could be something that was in the water, or maybe something in there guts.... might need to medicate them.

ps, none of my bichirs are stinky
 
Infblue;1918750; said:
of course not :grinno: i think he just meant that you have three big bichirs in a small tank that's probably underfiltered for the bioload you have. i've never had this problem, not even when i opened the shipping bag, so not sure what initially caused your situation.

have you tried adding activated carbon? may be that'll help.
Click to expand...



IITUFFTOBEATII;1918826; said:
most likely bacteria causing the odor. carbon in your filter only treats the symptom, not the cause.

could be something that was in the water, or maybe something in there guts.... might need to medicate them.

ps, none of my bichirs are stinky
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My filtration is a Rena xP3 canister. It might not be enough for the 3 of them but I don't think it's the filtration. They had this horrible smell of death when I first opened their bag. Tonight I'll add an extra AC70 and try some activated carbon but as IItufftobeatII said, that will only treat the symptom and not the problem.

Maybe it's the smell of a dead rotting fish carcass from the wild still digesting in one of their bodies??

I've never smelled anything so awful before.
 
Is it a rotting odor? I noticed this smell twice with cichlids not bichirs when they had bloat after I fished them out the next morning, hate to worry you but it could be internal.....:(
 
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