Ultimatum !!! Help with tank !

[Pataphysicist]

Alright, so i have been monster fish keeping for 2 years now and frankly its been a very bumpy road. Lots of mistakes were made, few expensive fish have been lost and frankly i spend more time worrying about the tank/fish/health of the specimens more than i enjoy the tank and my babies .. There has to be a better way of doing this or else i don't think am cut out for it. My last loss was a Motoro Ray , which drove me nuts the way she died. When i pulled her out her skin was red as if the water burnt her. High Ammonia , poor water quality , i don't even know anymore. Anyways, i currently have a nice stock left, which i have kept for the past 6 months with no " issues " as in everyone is alive.. But i feel like they're just not happy, they don't eat as much as i would like them 2 and not as active as i would like them 2.

Stock :

2 x 20" Spotted Gars
1 x 20" Golden Clown Knife
1 x 18" Silver Arowana
3 x 15-18 " Mono Bass
1 x 15-18" Endli Bichir

These guys, have made it with me for a long time. Gars, Golden knife have been with me for over a year. Seems like the gars are the only ones with crazy appetite which is no surprise for any of us, these guys are pigs, they don't stop eating. Now for the rest of these guys, feeding days are every other day with saturday and sunday off. No feeding on these 2 days, water changes on Sunday where i think the biggest problem is. Water straight from the tap its at 2.8 - 3 Ammonia/Chloramine which makes it nearly impossible for me to do water changes without killing some BB in the remaining water in the tank. Yes i treat the water before new water comes in, is not enough. As soon as i top the tank off with new water, my tank gets super cloudy. Which means i just murdered all that good BB floating in the water .. So my tank goes on a mini cycle literally every week after a water change.

My tank is a 220 G Wide . 6 L x 3 W x 2 H , and no is not really overcrowded . Ill post a pic. My filtration consists in an Eheim 2262 , 2 x Ac110's , 2 x SunSun's 402B . Eheim is packed with Eheim Substrate Pro , Bio Home, and Seachem Matrix . Thing weights like 150 LB.. Ac's have Chemi Pure Elite and Filter Floss, and the SunSun's are for Mechanical Filtration, Coarse Pads, Pot Scrubbers with foam inserts.

So the real questions are these :

- Please let me know a way where i can fix my water changes/ how to do it differently ( Please dont tell me treat the water first ) that would mean i have to treat 100 G of water before i pour it in.. thats a lot of buckets.......

- Anything to increase my fish appetite ( Specially my Endli, he barely eats ) bichirs can be picky eaters as it is, i know that. But my guy really eats like once a week,,, a piece of tilapia and thats it.

- Should i stop the bare bottom tank and add some gravel to create more BB to help me with my unfortunate high Ammonia/Chloramine in my tap water.

I feel like my fish stopped growing on the past 5 months, they haven't changed one bit. Anyways, just help a fellow fish keeper would ya :/

 

[Aquanero]

OK I read your post and downloaded your latest water report.
http://issuu.com/cityofboynton/docs/2014_water_quality_report?e=2931418/14089928

One suggestion would be to do two smaller water changes during the week. Smithing like 25% on Wednesday and Sunday opposed to one large one.

Can you post you're current parameters and then again right after a water change? Ammonia, nitrites, nitrate, hardness etc. What water conditioner are you using?

What are your long term goals? Those fish potentially will out growing your current set up. Any one of those might be OK but each one can grow pretty big for a 6 foot tank. I would start thinking about the potential max size of each species and which ones you can keep ad start selling off the rest. I'm a notorious understocker so to me it Looks very over crowed. At any rate post parameters and do smaller water changes.

 

[jaws7777]

Provide something for the endli to take cover in like dw or some stacked rocks. Could it be that your not dosing the water conditioner correctly as per the amount of chlaramine in your water

 

[fuzzlebug]

If the water changes are causing a problem could you not fit a drip system? Constant water change means no mini cycles. Also if you run a pre filter from the auto drip to the tank you should get rid of the ammonia issuse? Also if the pre filter doesn't deal with the chloramine you could use an auto top off pump with water conditioner.

 

[Southjerseycichlidz]

For an increase in appetite you could raise the temp a little bit if it's not already high and or try switching up the diet

 

[RD.]

My guess is that you are under-dosing your water conditioner. The cloudiness that you are experiencing is most likely from ammonia.

You need to be treating your tap water for 4.0 mg/l (ppm) chloramine, which is the max residual found in your area during certain times of the year, and you need to treat for the entire tank volume when performing large water changes. (220 gallons)

What water conditioner do you use?

 

[skjl47]

so to me it Looks very over crowed

Hello; looks overstocked to me as well. Lightly stocked tank being like a wide road with buffering for condition changes before going into the ditch. Overstocked being like a tightrope where small issues tip the balance.

Two years, I was making mistakes decades into my fishkeeping and am still learning. You went big fairly quickly.

I tend to agree with the post about more frequent water changes in place of a larger one less often. Not so much of a perodic shock to the tank.
Another guess is that the fish pictured are not only big for the tank but likely messy eaters. Excess food particles will decay in the tank and add to water quality issues.

 

[RD.]

Considering the current size of those fish, and the bio-filtration in place, as long as that bio-media is never scrubbed clean, or heavily disturbed, size of water change should be a non issue. In a well established tank, and with those species of fish, 80% water changes should be a non issue, as long as the OP is using a water conditioner such as Seachem Prime or Safe, at the proper dosage rate. This would render the free ammonia released from chloramine, harmless to the fish.

While I am not a personal fan of JDM style tanks, at this stage the current bio load shouldn't be an issue when performing a 50% water change. IMO the term overstocked is often overused and is more dependent on the care of the set up, vs the bio load. And this is coming from someone who is also a notorious understocker.

 

[Pataphysicist]

Well, first of all i want to thank all of you for taking the time and reading the post and replying to it. All input is welcome, now i understand that all a lot of you are kind of in the same page as for what conditioner do i use/ amount of conditioner am treating my tank with and the overcrowding issue. And final the potential sizes of the fish and my plans for them.


I have always used Prime, am lucky enough that my main store were i purchase my provisions from offers Prime refills at $ 5 a 500ML bottle. And everytime i do a water change i make sure to treat the water for 220 Gallon, not just the amount that was taken out. So chances of me under treating my water is out of the question.

I would love to have a drip system, treating the water simultaneously, but unfortunately am on a 3rd floor apartment !!!, and my tank is not drilled so, there goes that.

Overcrowded ? I mean i wouldn't call it that. I personally see them with enough room to roam around and frankly the size of the tank is pretty big for them right now. Sure who doesnt want a bigger tank, but am pretty sure my 2nd floor neighbor would end up with it in his living room one day. Not sure how the 3rd floor hasnt collapsed yet -_o.

Now on a side note, i came across something yesterday that i ended up buying on the store. An amazing HUGE Anubia plant , monster leaves so i decided to buy it and tie it to my center piece wood, Now i never done planted tank but i know the benefits of having them. Over night my water seemed to have gone from cloudy as you can see on the first picture i posted, to insanely crystal clear... Normal? If this is an answer to my problem i would be purchasing more of these amazing plants ! Here is a pic of how clear the tank is today compared to cloudy yesterday. First top were taken last night. The rest were taken this morning, you have to be here to see the huge change.

 

[RD.]

Well if that's the case, why post the following?

Water straight from the tap its at 2.8 - 3 Ammonia/Chloramine which makes it nearly impossible for me to do water changes without killing some BB in the remaining water in the tank. Yes i treat the water before new water comes in, is not enough. As soon as i top the tank off with new water, my tank gets super cloudy

BB doesn't live in the water, it lives on the surface of various things in your tank, mostly in the bio media of your filters. Secondly, if you are using Prime, how much are you using to treat your 220? You say that you treat for the entire tank volume, but exactly how much Prime do you add, and when do you add it? Just trying to help rule things out.

It still sounds like ammonia me, and that's also what you speculated killed your ray. So if you are indeed using Prime, and treating accordingly, your tank should be free, of free ammonia (NH3), after each and every water change. Unless you are messing around with your bio media at the same time as you perform water changes, which could also cause a bacterial bloom after your water changes.

I assume this is why both previous posters suggested smaller water changes for a start, I'm guessing that they feel that perhaps you are shocking your system with 50% water changes, which obviously should never happen in an established set up.