water change leads to lack of appetite and quick breathing

[angelfish83]

200 is getting into the considerably toxic levels of nitrate actually. Anything over 80 can be dangerous. They should be less than forty or fifty if possible for most fish

[angelfish83]

You don't need a protein skimmer for a freshwater tank, they are purely for Marine tank setups.

>>>

Saltwater protein skimmers and what im describing work differently. i am referring to surface slick, that stuff that makes the surface move less and look cloudy. An airpump removes that. As does a surface extractor. Thus 'skimming' the protein off the surface.

You can grow Java Fern or Anubias with relatively low light. Get a piece of wood and some thick fishing line and just tie the thick part of the root (the rhizome) tightly to the wood in several places. After a couple of months, the plant will have grabbed on enough that you can remove the fishing line if desired.

Make sure to tuck the sharp cut ends of the fishing line back in and make them as short as possible lest your fish cut their mouths by accident on them

If you want a plant you can 'plant' get cryptocyrene wendtii, its cheap, easy to find, and easy to grow. Just plant the roots evenly spread out in fairly deep gravel, and don't ever disturb it or dig it up, and it should do just fine. You can get just a couple of each plant if you like, given you have decent lighting.

[adampetherick]

His spraybars will already disturbing the surface slick...

[angelfish83]

His spraybars will already disturbing the surface slick...

ok you win...

[shari2]

Something I've done in the past when I was first starting with fish (and had even less money than a broke college student) was to find a nice piece or two of wood already sunk and soggy in a local stream/pond (not so soggy that it's rotting). Peel off any bark, use an old toothbrush or something to really get the gunk out of the cracks, and boil the sucker in a large pot (preferably one you don't care too much about!) for a LONG time. Really--like simmer all day.

Take it out, cool, scrub again, change the water and boil again--doesn't have to be all day this time. It will turn the water in the pot black most likely, and leave a lovely black ring around the edge of the pot. I still have one piece in my tank (covered with java moss) from the original 'gather' back in 1989...it was a 2" around branch with 3 'fingers'. It's getting a bit soft in the joints now but my pleco loves it.

Just be careful that you don't take it from a polluted stream and that you get out all the dirt/bugs/bark/gunk as much as possible before your first boil. You will find more after that first cooking... which is why I recommend doing it at least twice. Don't try to get dry wood. You will have a heck of a time trying to get it to sink in your tank. And don't use salt water driftwood. 'Bogwood' is wood that is found in freshwater bogs...

Or--if you come into a little cash, a nice piece of mopani wood is simply gorgeous in a tank. They are very dense and sink without much trouble usually. You can order online or usually can find it in decent lfs's (local fish stores).

[Martin Thoene]

Spraybar under the surface and angled up?

Absolutely......I have one like that. It gives immense water surface agitation and it's quiet too. I think you and your roomates might appreciate the lack of waterfall noises

What happened with my tank was a three-fold whammy. I believe (from their fuzzy appearance) that two of my Tiger Barbs died, hidden in the thick growth of ferns on the bogwood.
The filter (there's two) that has its spraybar agitating the water surface suddenly clogged and the flow dropped right off.
There's an Aquaclear 500 HOB filter on the tank and a load of plant depris got stuck in the intake and knocked THAT flow right down.

This all happened overnight. So I wake up in the morning to find a severely depleted O2 level, nitrates that registered at 250 mg/L after a 60% water change. Lord knows what they were before.

I lost 3 Clowns and 10 Tiger Barbs in total. I cleaned the two filters and added a positive air feed to one of the powerheads also in the tank. It blasts out a stream of bubbles now. That night I did another 40% water-change.

Everything was all good pretty quickly. You have to move QUICK in a situation like that.

Your 55 is good for a while until the Clowns grow some. Might not be a bad idea to add a powerhead for a bit more water movement and let the spraybar keep that surface gaseous exchange going.

Here's a paste over from the old LOL forum of the setup of my tank (Dated 20th October 2005):

Thought I would show you all some pics of the 6 foot tank in its new home and how I've set it up in preparation for moving the Clowns and kubotai over.

First, I put in a River-Tank manifold. Two powerheads, two sponge intakes.



Then in went some sand mixed with Latterite that had been in another tank before, then a lot of the unwashed sand that had been in the 6 footer before I moved it. The plants came from the 6 footer before, plus all the Microsoreum pterops (Windelov) are growing on driftwood and came from the Clown's present 120 gallon home.
I moved over 3 old Corydoras aneus from the 120 and they're having a whale of a time with a 6 foot swimming length, plus they LOVE the sand.



Here's a somewhat still cloudy, but moody nightime shot. The view from the couch.



Here's the cleared tank this morning.



Once the plants reposition themselves and start to get established, it will look even better.



Temperature is holding nicely at 83.5 and there's a gentle right to left current which will get stronger once I hook up the second Rena Filstar to the lower mounted spraybar. If I decide to add flow, I'll just switch to bigger powerheads on the R-T manifold.
..........................................................................................................

If you look at that last picture, you can see where the spraybars from the two Rena XP3 filters are mounted at the right end of the tank. One high for surface agitation, one low for current.

Martin.

[chefkeith]

I'm glad you got things under control. Sorry that I was not of help before. I've been busy all weekend because of the baseball games here in Detroit. I Love Tiger's baseball.

Back to water conditions-
What are all the parameters of your tap water?
Can you get a copy of your local water report? Perhaps it's online. If you can get ahold of the report, you then may be able to calculate more precisely how much dechlor or Prime to use. You should also get a Chlorine/chloramine test kit to check those levels.
Wait, I found the St. Pete water report online.
http://www.stpete.org/pdf/waterquality.pdf

St. Pete uses Chloramines at an avg of 3.8 ppm!!! The range is 1.8 to 5.5 ppm. That's a very wide range.
A regular dosage of Prime only treats 3.0 ppm of chloramines.
Good thing you've been overusing the dechlor stuff, but still maybe you didn't use enough and the chloramines caused the tank to mini cycle.


Other parameters on that report-
Hardness= 199ppm
Alkalinity= 130 ppm
pH = 7.99
Nitrate = 0.16

Still you might want to check your tap water and compare.


About the caves -
Ceramic bowls or Flower pots make good loach caves too. I use to smash some ceramics with a hammer and put the pieces in the tank in a creative manner. Make sure the ceramics are food safe though.

For a more natural look I like to use Driftwood, slate, and 1/2 pipes of pvc. These things work great together. If you can't find driftwood at your LFS, I've ordered alot from Aquatic EcoSystems at http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fus ... 0/cid/2928

HTH

[mikev]

After doing another 10 gallon water change, and using quite a bit of "prime" my tank is as follows:

Nitrate = 200
Nitrite = 0 (yeahhh!)
Hardness = 230
Alkalinity = 80
PH = 7.2


Seriously, considering how many water changes and moreover using lots of the prime, I can't believe my nitrates are still at 200. Oh well, looks like daily water changes are in order until the nitrates go back down..

Maybe you are not testing correctly, or a problem with the testkit?

Do the following: fill the tube with 50% of tap water and 50% of clean bottled water. See the reading you get. If it is still 200, do 25% of tap with 75% of clean. If it is still 200, don't believe your test. But if it is less than 200, you can now estimate the actual concentration.

[angelfish83]

cooooooooooooool!!!
Love the stand too

[Martin Thoene]

The stand is just a standard BA's cheapo (ish) flat-pack thing.

Martin.

[USFMarine]

The stand is just a standard BA's cheapo (ish) flat-pack thing.

Martin.

Sorry for the novice question (yet another), what is "BA?"

big als?

thanks

[Martin Thoene]

Yes Big Als.....Their PR and advertising representative angelfish83 will no doubt tell you how wonderful they are (j/k) They fulfil a need.

Martin.

[angelfish83]

The stand is just a standard BA's cheapo (ish) flat-pack thing.

Martin.

Oh I know... but its the newer cheapo. I have the cheapo antiguo and its not very nice to look at.

OH and dude- your nitrate kit is FAAUUUULTY...
Its difficult to get a good nitrate kit. You have to shell out about forty bucks.

[USFMarine]

OH and dude- your nitrate kit is FAAUUUULTY...
Its difficult to get a good nitrate kit. You have to shell out about forty bucks.

This is the kit I bought at petsmart for much more money. The seal was intact under the cap. Seems like a good name brand...

http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ct ... ips25tests

so should i assume my nitrates are under control? I don't have $40 just for nitrate testing.

[Martin Thoene]

USFMarine, Here's the amount of surface rippling I'm getting with the submerged spraybar.



Difficult to catch in a still picture, but you'll get the idea.

Oh and don't worry too much about your test kit. Avoid blanket and uncorroborated opinions. Take all opinions and find a common thread.....they're probably closer to the real deal.

Martin.