To make a long story short, I made an aquarium rock background for my 29 gallon tank, which I set up to be a Lake Malawi/African Reef tank, stocked with mbuna cichlids. I am currently running it off of a 30 gallon capacity hang-on-back filter, which is set up with an undergravel filter (yeah i know, old school) with dual airstones connected to a pump. I currently have it stocked with a breeding pair of 4-5" Red Zebras, (1) 3" Acei, and (1) 3" Yellow Labid. I also had a dozen feeder goldfish in the tank for the first 2 days, which are gone now and were fed to my 9" Jaguar cichlid in another tank. For the first 2 days they looked like they were doing great and were swimming around everywhere and discovering their new tank. As far as the background and set-up, I use regular polyurethane foam board "the pink stuff" for the background, and non-toxic silicione II for applying all of the pieces together, I used regular quikrete concrete resurfacer, which I dyed with non-toxic, liquid cement coloring (charcoal color). Following the cementing the process and applying the silicone, I let everything sit for a day with just the finished background and the glass tank itself. The day after I filled the tank all the way up with water and lightly brushed the background, which to my surprise, held up very well and the water did not cloud up at all. After doing about 3 water changes, I set-up the tank to cycle with it full of water and let it sit for two day, and for each of those days I did a 50% change in water. Throughout this process of having water in the tank, I constantly checked the pH. It looked to be in the 7.8-8.0 range, which i felt was okay since I was setting up the tank for malawi mbuna cichlids, making it a suitable pH level since they enjoy more basic, alkaline water levels. On the second day I added black gravel, rocks, 2 anubias plants, and 6 amazon swordtail plants. On the third day, I added the 2 red zebras, the acei, and the yellow labid. For the next 2 days they swam around happily and now late last night (Sunday), the seemed very lethargic and had closed fins. The yellow labid seems to be the worst and has been tilting his head up towards the surface and has been moreso "wagging" his body to move, opposed to gliding and moving his fins. The tank is also at about 80 degrees F. Please let me know if you guys have any ideas on what the issues may be, if any may exist. I don't want to lose my fish. Thanks!
The picture of my set-up is below.
The picture of my set-up is below.
The 29 gallon is now completely empty. I did 2 complete water changes on it, hosed the background, rocks, and gravel all down again, then I filled the tank all the way up to start cycling it. I will let it sit for the next 6 weeks on its cycle and I will continue to monitor it every day. Thanks everyone! If you have any other ideas, please let me know!