Cloudy fish tank / how I killed my fish

Right after I got rid of the ick, just a day or so after reducing the copper medication, salt, and beginning to reduce the temperature back down to normal, my fish tank's water began to get cloudy. After 24 hours it was bad. After 48 you could barely see the back of the tank. For the next 3 weeks I did water changes every other day trying to get rid of whatever was in it.

According to the searches I did, I first needed to decide if it was white or green. Well, it looked white from the front, but greenish from the side. So, I decided to try one of those medications that make the particles in the water stick together so that they can be filtered out easier. At the same time I turned 1/2 of my lights off in case it was algae. It didn't work.

I posted to a couple of forums for some help and ended up getting useless responses like "it must be a fungus from your driftwood" -mmm no. The driftwood's been in there for over a year. "Then it must be because you have too much gravel" or one of many other excuses, no real help.

So, I was left to sort it out for myself. Although it started right after the medication was stopped, I was pretty sure the biological filter was okay because the ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite tests were fine, so it wasn't cycling. I've also been very careful about not overfeeding, so an algae or bacterial bloom didn't seem right either. I decided to clean out my filter instead. I found an improperly installed foam pad, and hoped that would fix it. It did not.

Again, I posted for help (on a different forum), but again I only got answers from people who didn't even read the post -they blamed how long I left my lights on in my tank (12 hours) even though they've been on like that since December without any issues, so again I dismissed the advice.

I had one last idea -I pulled all of my plants out of the tank thinking that the dead leaves may have been feeding a bacteria bloom. I put the plants in a bucket and waited. I thought it had improved a bit, but I was still having to do water changes every 3 days.

Then last week on Wednesday I started another "every other day" water change by draining 75% of the water out of the tank. The cichlids were all at the bottom kindof stressing out as they had been doing while I was doing such big changes -but they had to be done or I couldn't see anything at all in the tank! So, I started refilling the tank and then I noticed that I was out of water conditioner. I had a choice to make -leave the fish stressed out in a tiny bit of water while I ran out for more or just go without it. I figured all it did was get the chlorine out, so I kept filling, but made sure the water was really splashing upon entry to try to aerate it more so the chlorine would diffuse out faster on its own. Then Ed came home and we went out to eat. When we came back all but one fish was dead, and the remaining fish was on the bottom breathing hard.

I removed the fish and put him in a quarantine tank that I was readying for some new cichlids, but it was too late -he died soon after. So, I killed all my cichlids in about an hour by not using water conditioner. The plecos were okay, we ran out and got water conditioner and added it to the water right away.

A water test from before adding the conditioner revealed 2ppm of ammonia! The water conditioner cut that down to zero. I tested the tap water straight and it was 4ppm! I don't know if this is temporary or if it's always been like this, but I'll definitely keep an eye on it from now on and I won't ever do a water change without water conditioner again!

Oh, and on Saturday I got 12 new cichlids. And on Sunday I picked up some Algaefix to give that a try to remedy the cloudy water and as of Monday night the tank is clear again! -I'll have to see if it comes back. If it does I'll have to cut the lighting back to see if that helps. I definitely don't want to continue the algaefix forever -my pleco's would starve!

Making sure the ich is gone.

As of last night I couldn't stand how dirty the tank was any more. I did a 50% water change (I figured while I was at it I'd get rid of as many ich organisms as I could). After filling the tank back up I added a 1/2 dose of CopperSafe and 1/2 of my salt back in to replace what was taken out with the water. One hour later I tested both the copper levels and the salinity and found I needed a tad more salt, but the copper level looked good.

Still no signs of ich. My plans are to continue to treat with a full dose salt and copper as well as a temperature of 85*F for at least another week. After that I may begin lowering the temperature and decreasing the copper and salt via water changes (ie: change 25% of the water and not add back the salt and copper afterwards).

For some background: I got the ich originally from PetSmart with a batch of pictus catfish and rubbernose plecos. None of the fish survived it because I caught it way too late. I treated the tank with Aquari-Sol for 2 weeks after the last fish died, then added the cichlids and the large bristlenose pleco, which started showing signs of ich after about a week.

At the time of adding the cichlids I chose not to quarantine them because I had only one seemingly ich-resistant bushynose pleco in the tank at the time. But, even with having had the ich from PetSmart, I was fairly sure I wouldn't quarantine in the future either. The reason was that it is just so hard to set up a tank (including cycling) to run for 2-3 weeks, then have to break down and store it...

But after this round I'm done. All of the fish I purchase from now on will be quarantined!

Speaking of which, I may go get the other half of my planned cichlid purchase this weekend. That way, by the time I'm sure the tank will be completely cured of ich, the new cichlids will be done with their quarantine period, and then I'll be done for awhile! :-)

The end of the ich?

As of Sunday Ed and I noticed that the big pleco who I doubted would survive this round with ich was pretty much free of the ich dots. The water chemistry looked good (about 10ppm of NitrAte, no ammonia, no NitrIte), so I skipped my Saturday water change since the levels of copper and salt seem to be right-on for getting rid of the ich.

...but as of yesterday the tank was disgusting. I really, really want to do a vacuum in there. I think I'm going to do it tonight...

In a week or so I'll consider the ich gone and I'll stop adding copper and salt when I do a water change, and I'll start lowering the temp back down to 80*F.

Now I just have to watch out for fungus and bacterial infections since the fish will be healing from the ich now... I hope I'm out of the woods with this, though...

Ich continued...

So, I still have ich in my tank. The new pleco's been getting worse and worse in fact today I noticed that his eyes are now cloudy and the right one looks like it's peeling -ew!

The cichlids are still active. The acei may have fewer spots on them, but all-in-all they are looking fairly good. The original pleco, for the past couple days, has looked like it's been breathing fast. I'm a bit concerned (paranoid?) about that because everything I'm doing to combat the ich is reducing the oxygen levels in the tank as well, so hopefully I don't kill them with the treatment...

But Wednesday I ran out of Aquari-Sol after adding a 1/2 dose in the morning, so after work I went to pick up another bottle and some salt to add as well. Unfortunately, they didn't have Aquari-Sol... So, I spent about 20min looking at all my different options. It seems Machalite Green is the medication of choice, but I'm pretty sure I've used that before and it turned all my decorations green. It wasn't a big deal back then, but now I have a big, expensive piece of WHITE limestone holey rock in my tank that's too heavy to take out and I'd really rather not have it turn green... So, I was left with copper-based meds (similar to Aquari-Sol) or Formalin (formaldehyde). I decided to stick with copper meds and ended up choosing Mardel CopperSafe based on dosage since I have a large tank and the Aquari-Sol's dosing of 12 drops per gallon meant I had to count out 12 x 72 drops a day >:-P.

I didn't notice until I got home that the instructions on the CopperSafe say 1tsp for every 4 gallons treats a tank for a month. Call me skeptical, but... a month!?! That actually creates a problem for me -when I do a water change, how do I know how much to add back in? ...So, tonight I went back to the store and bought an Instant Ocean copper test kit and I also got their hydrometer as well to test the salt level. The copper tested out at about 0.20 and the salinity came out to be about 5 or a specific gravity of 1.002. So now I know.

I'll do a water change this weekend with a good gravel vac. Last weekend I did an over 50% water change, I'll probably do the same again this weekend. Other options are dips (I'd rather not) or maybe setting up my 10gal as a quarantine tank for at least the big guy and treating it bare-bottomed with the stainy green stuff to see if I can get rid of it before he dies (or kill him in the process, which almost seems merciful at this point).

All I know is that instead of my tank being relaxing, fun, or pretty to look at, I can't even look at it anymore. I go out of my way to capture spiders in the house and take them outside instead of killing them and here I am causing pain and suffering to these fish with my ineptitude. And to make matters worse the information online is contradictory and generally unhelpful. ...blah.

Ich! (or "Ick")

I keep recording my fish stuff in various notebooks, then I loose them or they get wet and it's no longer usable or congruent. So, why not record it here on the blog that changes week-to-week. Will I forget and go back to my notebook tomorrow? Who knows, but for now I'll pretend like this will be permanent...

So, after Xmas I lost my fantail goldfish and was left with 2 goldfish and a pleco in a 72 gallon tank. It seemed like a waste, so I got some pictus catfish and a couple more plecos to try to battle the algae problem that's developed since I got a stronger light system (for my real plants). A couple days later my goldfish started getting really listless and the one who's had fin rot for quie some time was doing really poorly, so I moved the goldfish back into their original 20 gallon tank and started treating them with Maracyn II and then Jungle All-In-One. They started getting better, but the new catfish and plecos started dropping one-by-one. I didn't figure out why until late (they had ich), so my treatment (Aquari-Sol) was late and I lost every one of them. I then had only the one original pleco in a 72 gallon tank.

I continued treating for ich since I knew the parasites were still in there. I treated for 1 week solid, then a half ("maintenance") dose for another week. At the same time I researched cichlids and decided to get some once the tank was clear. After 2 weeks, I figured I'd be good, so I picked up a 4-inch bushynose pleco and 6 cichlids -all juveniles: 2 yellow labs, 2 acei, and 2 Pundamilia nyererei. For a week they were fine, but starting yesterday I'd see them brushing up against the rocks to scratch an itch and I also started seeing the tell-tale little white dots on them (it looks like salt).

So today I did a water change, increased the temperature from 27.2*C to 29.4*C (by 1 degree an hour), and started the Aquari-Sol treatment as well. The new pleco is the worst off as far as I can tell -he's got dots everywhere (but they are spaced out) and he's been leaping to the surface and getting air (although they say plecos do that, he had't been before). Not sure if that's an ich thing or because of the temperature increase, but so far it's only been increased 1 degree C, so...? Other fish have only a few dots that I can see, but like I said, they've been scratching, so they are definitely infested. I really hope I'm treating early enough this time! :-(