planted tank, fishes breathing heavily

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Yell0r0b

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Apr 18, 2006
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i have a planted tnak and my fishes all seem to be breathing heavily. this has been going on for a couple months now. from what i understand, plants in the tank should help aerate the water.

on top of everythig, i woke up this morning to 3 dead clown loaches. WTH is going on. one was lieing on its side breathing very heavily. moved it to my hospital tank and it died couple hours later. one was swimming franticly all over the tank. doing flips and slpashing water on the surface on the tank , then just dropped and died. the 3rd one was already dead when i woke up.

water temp is at 78 F
ph 6.0

dont have testers for the other stuff, i will test them when i take a sample in my lfs tomoro. but im pretty sure it should all be okay since i do a 25% water change weekly.

it is a 60g tank with filtration system fluval 304 and 305, 9w uv sterilizer. oxygenated by 4ft wand and air pump
black sand as substrate
i just recently (slowly over the past month) started adding in several plants. could it be something to do with the plants? the liquid fertilizer added? Co2 tablets?

please help me understand why
thank..
 
plants are grown on driftwood, not into the substrate if that makes any differance
 
Don't know much about co2 tablets but iirc co2 displaces oxygen and plants also use oxygen during some part of photosynthesis. I may be completely wrong but this is what I remember.
 
Your co2 tabs are likely the culprit. How many do you use and how frequently? Plants use oxygen only at night when they respire, but while photosynthesizing they produce oxygen. How heavily stocked is you aquarium, and with what fish? During the day you should turn off the bubbler as it will release much of the co2. In order to maintain high enough levels using co2 tablets with a bubbler you will reach very high levels of co2.
 
I can tell you that the ph is a little too low for loaches, 6.5 is lowest in my opinion. CO2 will also alter the ph. Shut the ph down right before you turn off the lights. Give it 5 minutes.
 
i've only used the c02 tablets once. and last time i used it was 2 weeks ago. so thats prolly not it.
the tank is pretty stocked, about 8 cl, 3 geos, 5 bichirs , 1 sev , 1 gar, 2 dats.

but it has been running stocked like that for about 1 year now.
 
What are the sizes of all your fish? Your fish I assume are all still on growing phase. The more they grow, the more overstocked your tank becomes.:) In a year, surely your fish have already had large size difference from the day they were bought and up to the present. The culprit may still be oxygen deterioration or dead substrate spots in case you failed to give the substrate a stir.:)
 
maybe it is the substrate stir, i dont offen stir alot of the substrate around because the sand kinda kicks up and gets into my filters. i have very fine sand (colorquartz). it wierd that all my other fishes are doing fine though. i just lost another clown loach this morning too. this is really beginning to piss me off. i have moved some of the bigger fishes to my bigger tank. maybe that will help a little...
 
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