your best friend right now and forever will be lots of large water changes. with what you got going on right now i'd be doing 50% water changes every couple of days until you get a larger tank.
Questions about our PACU's
- Thread starter mish_1125
- Start date
all together there is 4 filters for the tank... and cassharper... i AM getting GREAT advice and tips!! i am sooo happy i asked on here... and i know none of you are being critical and that is great but a good slap on my forehead is always good and for ppl to tell me what i am doing wrong and what i should be doing instead... like i said im NOT a fish person ...my hubby is and like i said it was ignorance on his part for not finding EVERYTHING out and believe what ppl telling them at store when they probably know as much as he did when he bought them... but im am gonna do what everyone is telling me i should and hopefully it fixes it and the fish go back to theirselves... thanks again everyone!
Get a freshwater test kit when you go for salt...testing the water will tell you what is going on there...this is an essential component for proper fishkeeping...
zennzzo;2347919; said:
Lol, I go on like a 3 paragraph tangent and I forget one of the most important things!
Pacu are very sensitive to ammonia and nitrites. In a cycled tank, there is enough beneficial bacteria to consume the ammonia generated in fish waste, fish respiration and decomposing food. These bacteria convert the ammonia into nitrites which are also very toxic to fish. Another group of bacteria consume the nitrites and generate nitrates which are not as toxic as ammonia and nitrites. Nitrates can build up very rapidly in the tank. High nitrate levels lead to stunting, premature death, hole-in-the-head disease, failure to thrive, and a host of other problems. In a cycled tank, there is no ammonia or nitrite readings. There is only nitrate building up. The biological filters should be gently squeezed in a bucket of tank water in order to preserve the beneficial bacteria. As an ignorant newbie, I did not understand the nitrogen cycle, so I would thoroughly scrub the filter media in hot chlorinated water! This would effectively kill off the beneficial bacteria, and we would get ammonia and nitrite readings when we tested the water.
Cloudy eye is usually caused by ammonia burns, or a bacterial infection. If I were to hazard a guess, with your water change schedule and filter scrubbing practices, I would bet that you have an ammonia problem. Water change, water change, water change. You need to invest in a fresh water master test kit and start testing the water routinely.
Our pacu are very sensitive to ammonia and nitrites. They would start gasping if there was any ammonia or nitrite in the water. Immediately after a water change large enough to remove all the ammonia and nitrite, they would be back to normal.
If you do have ammonia and/or nitrite in the tank, a large water change is in order. I would also add AmQuel Plus which neutralizes ammonia and nitrites. You need to have increased aeration if you use this product, and it is only a temporary first aid procedure to make the water safe for your fish. The addition of Aquarium Salt would be a good thing to do. From personal experience, I can tell you that it is very hard to to keep ammonia and nitrites at "0", and to keep nitrates down in a tank as over stocked as your tank is. Our rescued fish came in a 55 gallon tank--2 pacu, 4 oscars and 2 pleco. They were all big fish when my husband rescued them. When I finally understood the nitrogen cycle and started testing the water, we were doing the equivalent of 100% water changes every day to achieve good water parameters for the fish. We literally changed out 50 - 60 gallons or more in 5 gallon buckets, 15 gallons at a time. We had to do this every day. For your fish to survive any length of time in that tank, you will have to do massive water changes, too.
Our four surviving rescued fish are in a 300 gallon tank. We change out about 500 gallons a week to keep the nitrates below 20 ppm, and we have massive biological filtration so the tank is always cycled with no ammonia or nitrites. As our pacu get bigger, we will have a harder time controlling the nitrates and will have to make a bigger home for them.
I recommend
1. Doing a big water change
2. Testing the water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates with a freshwater master test kit
3. Aquarium Salt
4. Plenty of aeration
5. AmQuel Plus if you have ammonia/nitrites in the tank
6. Reading up on the nitrogen cycle (so you don't make the same mistakes we did)
7. With your current tank and stocking, plan on doing massive daily water changes to keep good water parameters
8. In that overcrowded tank, the brown sludge on the filter media is good. (We needed every bit of it to keep the ammonia and nitrites down.)
9. Be planning on a huge tank
After all,
I really do hope your pacu survive. We love ours dearly and would be devastated if something happened to them.
Cloudy eye is usually caused by ammonia burns, or a bacterial infection. If I were to hazard a guess, with your water change schedule and filter scrubbing practices, I would bet that you have an ammonia problem. Water change, water change, water change. You need to invest in a fresh water master test kit and start testing the water routinely.
Our pacu are very sensitive to ammonia and nitrites. They would start gasping if there was any ammonia or nitrite in the water. Immediately after a water change large enough to remove all the ammonia and nitrite, they would be back to normal.
If you do have ammonia and/or nitrite in the tank, a large water change is in order. I would also add AmQuel Plus which neutralizes ammonia and nitrites. You need to have increased aeration if you use this product, and it is only a temporary first aid procedure to make the water safe for your fish. The addition of Aquarium Salt would be a good thing to do. From personal experience, I can tell you that it is very hard to to keep ammonia and nitrites at "0", and to keep nitrates down in a tank as over stocked as your tank is. Our rescued fish came in a 55 gallon tank--2 pacu, 4 oscars and 2 pleco. They were all big fish when my husband rescued them. When I finally understood the nitrogen cycle and started testing the water, we were doing the equivalent of 100% water changes every day to achieve good water parameters for the fish. We literally changed out 50 - 60 gallons or more in 5 gallon buckets, 15 gallons at a time. We had to do this every day. For your fish to survive any length of time in that tank, you will have to do massive water changes, too.
Our four surviving rescued fish are in a 300 gallon tank. We change out about 500 gallons a week to keep the nitrates below 20 ppm, and we have massive biological filtration so the tank is always cycled with no ammonia or nitrites. As our pacu get bigger, we will have a harder time controlling the nitrates and will have to make a bigger home for them.
I recommend
1. Doing a big water change
2. Testing the water for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates with a freshwater master test kit
3. Aquarium Salt
4. Plenty of aeration
5. AmQuel Plus if you have ammonia/nitrites in the tank
6. Reading up on the nitrogen cycle (so you don't make the same mistakes we did)
7. With your current tank and stocking, plan on doing massive daily water changes to keep good water parameters
8. In that overcrowded tank, the brown sludge on the filter media is good. (We needed every bit of it to keep the ammonia and nitrites down.)
9. Be planning on a huge tank
After all,
I really do hope your pacu survive. We love ours dearly and would be devastated if something happened to them.
just one thing to say. somone can correct me if i'm wrong, but if you have a friend who also keeps fish it would be helpful to get some of his filter media so some bacteria can grow and you won't have to wait as long for the nitrogen cycle to take place.
Welsome to MFK
First off i would never clean the filters ever unless you mean replaceing filter cartiges if you clean a filter complettley ( as in takeing it apart and scrubbing it with soap and such ) it will remove the bacteria that grow in it that are needed to keep your tank healthy
On to the fish Yes they are dieing your gonna need to do weekly water changes if not twice a week with that stocking level i would change 40%-50% of the water twice a week to keep the water params good also i would add salt to your water and look into some Meds for them other members can help with which ones to get
First off i would never clean the filters ever unless you mean replaceing filter cartiges if you clean a filter complettley ( as in takeing it apart and scrubbing it with soap and such ) it will remove the bacteria that grow in it that are needed to keep your tank healthy
On to the fish Yes they are dieing your gonna need to do weekly water changes if not twice a week with that stocking level i would change 40%-50% of the water twice a week to keep the water params good also i would add salt to your water and look into some Meds for them other members can help with which ones to get
Yes this is helpfull if you know some one with a cycled aquarium you can take water and/or media from there tank and add it to yours to cycle it fasterMusd;2348050; said:
