No prob. Yeah that's what is likely part of the problem....once those bonds break with the Nitrates its likely a flood of nitrates becoming toxic again.
Strange behavior
- Thread starter DudaFish
- Start date
No prob. Yeah that's what is likely part of the problem....once those bonds break with the Nitrates its likely a flood of nitrates becoming toxic again.
Wow. I think I finally got my answer. So I have an established yet overstocked tank. Even though the fish appear healthy, light overdo water changes have shaken things up. I use 10 drops of Prime per 5 gallon bucket to treat the new water for chlorine... adding 25 gallons for my 110 tank. A cpl days after, my entire tank starts it's 48 hour top water breathing behavior. Seams the prime was doing more than I thought and was doing its science with the nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia. When my tank retoxified, the fish would fight for air for the next 24-48 hrs. Eventually returning to their calm, seemingly happy, not overfeed (pellets and occasional shrimp) life. I completely overlooked the waste my fish were producing. I have been all along. I've managed to run this tank in two different houses for about 6 years. Raise a huge jag and JD. Established them with a firemouth, red devil, and a black belt. I've successfully surrounded the jag that owns it all with primarily Central American fish. Yet I've never considered their waste. By doing all this, I've robbed them all a chance to be even bigger and healthier. Now I know to do proper water changes and to slim the tank down. I've already found a home and removed my youngest and fastest growing fish, the Oscar. I've added pura complete to start regulating my nitrate/nitrite levels. Which I will test. My water changes will be more often and gradually larger to get to where I need to be. Plan to continue using the prime as directed on the bottle using no more or less than called for. If this strange behaivior reoccures you all will be the first to know. Thanks for all your input. Let this be a lesson learned for everyone who reads this. It has been for me with tons more to learn. Now I'm unsure of what wakeing up my tank will do when it reaches its prime condition. We shall see. Here are the beginning and ending photos of this conversation up do date.
MD
MD
It sounds like you're getting it worked out.
Just for a reference, I have 11 medium to large cichlids in a 210 gallon tank that I feed twice a day. I do a 90% water change on this tank every Friday. I pump the water out of the tank with a siphon hose hooked to a water pump (Mag Drive) that runs straight to my bathtub via 20' of flexible tubing. Once the tank siphons down, I turn on the bathtub faucet, adjust the temperature, stick a bucket under it, and drop the Mag Drive pump into the bucket. I add a little over two capfuls of Prime (I use the big bottle, so one capful treats 100 gallons) directly to the tank, then plug in the water pump and stick the end of the hose in the tank to refill. It takes an hour or so to do all of this (depends on how powerful your water pump is) but there's really only about 10 minutes of actual work. The best part is that there's no heavy lifting with bucketfuls of water. Keep in mind that my pH does not change once the water ages -- it's the same from the tap as it is in the tank. Some people have water where the pH differs from the tap vs. aged, so it'd probably be a bad idea to do such a large water change using this method if that were the case. You don't want them to have pH shock.
You can pick up a relatively strong water pump for about $60 online and the non-toxic potable water grade flexible tubing is sold for a few cents per foot on most aquarium sites. I think you can also get it at places like Home Depot, but I always order all my fish supplies online. You also have to get male and female adapters for the water pump so that the tubing and siphon hose will hook up to it. Still, for less than $100 you will save yourself a ton of time and labor, especially if you have multiple tanks!
Anyway, the point of all that is my tank needs those large water changes or I'd run into water quality issues real fast. My nitrates still creep up really quickly, so I try to avoid going over a week. It'd actually be better if I did them a couple times a week, but I have so many tanks that it's hard to do that. Your biological filtration should be taking care of ammonia and nitrite, so your big issue right now is probably nitrate, and all of the dissolved organics that come along with fish waste and leftover food. Filters will not remove those and chemicals are really just a band-aid. The best way to take care of them are water changes. Don't let them scare you -- if you get the right equipment (water pump, Python siphon system, etc.) they are pretty easy and painless. Your fish will thank you for it.
Just for a reference, I have 11 medium to large cichlids in a 210 gallon tank that I feed twice a day. I do a 90% water change on this tank every Friday. I pump the water out of the tank with a siphon hose hooked to a water pump (Mag Drive) that runs straight to my bathtub via 20' of flexible tubing. Once the tank siphons down, I turn on the bathtub faucet, adjust the temperature, stick a bucket under it, and drop the Mag Drive pump into the bucket. I add a little over two capfuls of Prime (I use the big bottle, so one capful treats 100 gallons) directly to the tank, then plug in the water pump and stick the end of the hose in the tank to refill. It takes an hour or so to do all of this (depends on how powerful your water pump is) but there's really only about 10 minutes of actual work. The best part is that there's no heavy lifting with bucketfuls of water. Keep in mind that my pH does not change once the water ages -- it's the same from the tap as it is in the tank. Some people have water where the pH differs from the tap vs. aged, so it'd probably be a bad idea to do such a large water change using this method if that were the case. You don't want them to have pH shock.
You can pick up a relatively strong water pump for about $60 online and the non-toxic potable water grade flexible tubing is sold for a few cents per foot on most aquarium sites. I think you can also get it at places like Home Depot, but I always order all my fish supplies online. You also have to get male and female adapters for the water pump so that the tubing and siphon hose will hook up to it. Still, for less than $100 you will save yourself a ton of time and labor, especially if you have multiple tanks!
Anyway, the point of all that is my tank needs those large water changes or I'd run into water quality issues real fast. My nitrates still creep up really quickly, so I try to avoid going over a week. It'd actually be better if I did them a couple times a week, but I have so many tanks that it's hard to do that. Your biological filtration should be taking care of ammonia and nitrite, so your big issue right now is probably nitrate, and all of the dissolved organics that come along with fish waste and leftover food. Filters will not remove those and chemicals are really just a band-aid. The best way to take care of them are water changes. Don't let them scare you -- if you get the right equipment (water pump, Python siphon system, etc.) they are pretty easy and painless. Your fish will thank you for it.
On that tank I use a big wet/dry filter full of bioballs and filter floss. The filter floss gets dirty really quickly because my Geos constantly stir up stuff while sifting through the sand, and the filters catch it. I usually rinse and squeeze out the floss in the tub using the flow of aquarium water from the hose as it's draining. Since it takes about 30 minutes to drain, that gives me time to rinse everything using the tank water. The idea is to get all the gunk out but keep your beneficial bacteria which live in colonies in your filter floss, bioballs, ceramic noodles, or whatever filter media you prefer. If you rinse the filter media in tank water, you don't risk killing off your bacteria colony with the chlorine in your tap water. I try to do this bi-weekly.
In my other big tank I use an FX5 canister filter. It's a bit trickier because you actually have to move the whole thing to the tub, unscrew the lid, and pull the baskets out to clean it. It's a pain in the @$$. I don't clean that one as often, maybe once a month or so.
On my small tanks (40 gallon breeders, 55 gallons) I have AquaClear 110 hang-on-back power filters and sponge filters. I usually try to clean those once a month. If you have a good prefilter sponge over the intake of your filter to stop large particles of food and waste from getting sucked up into it, they don't get dirty as fast. I'd rather just siphon large particulate and detritus off of the sand with each water change than have it clogging up my filters and causing them to get dirty faster.
I only use carbon to remove medications from tanks. There's always a big controversy around carbon. While it does polish the water to some extent, it's also said to leech stuff back into the water if you don't change it often enough. My train of thought is that if the water is clean from weekly water changes, why risk it, and why have an added expense? So I just keep some on hand in case I have to remove a medication.
In my other big tank I use an FX5 canister filter. It's a bit trickier because you actually have to move the whole thing to the tub, unscrew the lid, and pull the baskets out to clean it. It's a pain in the @$$. I don't clean that one as often, maybe once a month or so.
On my small tanks (40 gallon breeders, 55 gallons) I have AquaClear 110 hang-on-back power filters and sponge filters. I usually try to clean those once a month. If you have a good prefilter sponge over the intake of your filter to stop large particles of food and waste from getting sucked up into it, they don't get dirty as fast. I'd rather just siphon large particulate and detritus off of the sand with each water change than have it clogging up my filters and causing them to get dirty faster.
I only use carbon to remove medications from tanks. There's always a big controversy around carbon. While it does polish the water to some extent, it's also said to leech stuff back into the water if you don't change it often enough. My train of thought is that if the water is clean from weekly water changes, why risk it, and why have an added expense? So I just keep some on hand in case I have to remove a medication.
