hi there and hope all is well,
had a little problem but one that i can control with water changes im sure. After changing my filter which was not working properly from phosphate readings i had, was sure it was the external filter was on its way out. Spent a wad and bought a new one and of course keeping the filter media from the original one as it had all required bacteria there. There was no chemical levels before nitrite or nitrate ect, but i am annoyed as there is a damn slight hint there of both now which is bugging me as i say i kept and transferred all original filter media over.

I am hoping i can get it down with weekly water changes as before there was not even a hint of any of these for over 2 years

I also wanted to mention that i seem to have a phosphate problem in the tank, had looked at food as it could be a waste issue, and mind you my oscar east at least 4 times day he is a damn greedy little bugger. I have been feeding him prawns, shrimp, bloodworm and the occasional muscle. He only eats the pellets once on a blue moon at a real push which is a pain as they are good in nutrients as far as i am aware. I went and bought 3 silver tipped tetras sure thats what they are called and he has no prob with them, it was purely as they are grabbing his left over tiny bits and to help with waste as they seem to be a fan of scavenging. He will starve before he will eat the pellets.

I had been somewhere as i was on this forum few weeks back as he had developed a sort of fungal or streak of new mucus all over and a mate has said check phosphate and course i nearly died that was it. Changed the tank ect worked on it over a week and viola solved the issue, well thought i had. The tank was changed 3 days ago again and the damn phosphate are still rather high and i am lost on this one, same as the other chemicals.

Any advice on food would be a bonus and phosphate anything really that can help me would be great.

Once again thanks in advance
H

check out this website for some info on phosphates and how they accumlate


www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/phosphates.php

What exactly are your readings for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. It is virtually impossible to have a reading of zero for nitrate, ideally it should be below 20 but below 40 is fine. If your reading for nitrite is very low and ammonia is zero then the nitrite will very quickly settle at zero. In changing your media some of the good bacteria have died off and the rest need to breed and catch up. This shouldnt take long if the reading is low. Just do some extra water changes until this happens, say twice as many as normal

hi there and thanks for that the readings arr under 0.3 i use a hagen full test kit. Can anyone advise me on the food issues i mentioned? it would be great
thanks
h

Your oscar will not starve if you feed him pellets only it will just take time, up to 2 weeks maybe longer. Only feed him pellets, if he dont eat them take them out. Do this for a week and if he aint eating them feed him food he likes for 1 day then back to the pellets for a week. Continue until he eats the pellets. Eventually he will eat the pellets. No oscar will starve itself to death, he is just either fussy or not used to pellets

A varied diet is a very good idea, in addition to what you mention, try worms, mealworms, maggots, lance fish, krill, any small fish from the fish monger, and any insects you can get

thanks for that delboybully , got some bad news again though. Goes from one thing to another just now and had no probs for a over 2 years

the tank after a water changed seemed to me to be getting more and more cloudy like a white haze, did another water change today and checked all filter media ect, chemical levels ect and voila ten mins after water change its all cloudy again? driving me mad only stuff used was water aqua plus no other chemical put in, no gravel change ect algae under full control and as said had put another 3 fish in there small ones that seem to help clean out the left over grub ect. Hope you can advise once again

Many thanks and your a star x
h

I can think of 2 reasons for cloudy water and i have seen examples of both

This old lady had 3 goldfish in a 4 ft tank. She mentioned to me that the tank was clear in the morning but got cloudy as the day went on. I went to have a look at it and the water was like milk. She had no filter and the old lady was feeding 3 times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner as she put it. What was happening was all the excess food was settling in the gravel at night when the fish were inactive. During the day as the fish were active they were disturbing the gravel by moving causing all the waste in the gravel to go into the tank water.

It could be that when you add water after do a water change it is disturbing the gravel causing all the crap to be disturbed. To test to see if this is the case swirl some of the gravel around and see if the water goes cloudy. After you have done this do a water change as swirling the gravel can cause lots of waste into the water and cause ammonia to temporary rise. Do you clean the gravel and how often.

The other possibility could be because of a bacterial bloom. When i first started my discus tank i fed what i thought was a small amount (being an oscar keeper i was use to feeding quite a bit). I ended up with cloudy water. A friend of mine used to own a small fish shop and she diagnosed a bacterial bloom. What happens is you end up with free swimming bacteria that are too small to get caught in the filter. To get rid of the cloudy water use filter aid. It clumps the small particles together so that the filter can 'catch' them. However you also need to stop the cause which is overfeeding/lack of maintainence. I didnt test my water then, if i had i would have got an early warning that things were going wrong, my nitrates were too high. Luckily for i didnt lose any fish but discus are more sensitive to poor water than oscars so i was lucky

Can you test your water and post your results please

Results are using Hagen test kit (my tank is a 90 gallon tank)
Nitrit 0.1
Nitrate 5
Ammonia (to my horror) 4.9
PH Wide Range 6.0
"" Low Range 6.2
""High Range Between 8.6 - 8.4
Phosphates just under 5.0

I came from having a slightly buggered external filter but a tank showing no chemicals whatsoever to this after a change to a new external filter, even although i transferred all the filter media right away and filled filter with only tank water

The only other difference is that i put 3 silver tipped dollars in the tank with 2 smallish parrot fish, only new additions.

Okay maybe food but have cut down dramatically here with your advice.

Not happy about the ammonia ect got me well concerned and whats bugging me more is i have done 2 water changes this week so far and added the cycle stuff to the water ect.
Wondering wither i need to do a huge and i mean huge water change tomorrow and take out well over 50 percent.

Thing is my tank is a priority to me and it and has been so well taken care of that this is confusing me, never ever had this issue, and so angry for changing the filter but then had no other option.

seems to be one problem after another getting

thanks again your advice is appreciated and patience no one else will help me, and also please trust me when i say i do look after my tanks as i know that issues that can occur and i know folk say they do and they dont.

cheers
H

If your buggered filter stopped working for more than 5 hours or longer then your good bacteria will have died off. So transferring the media to a new filter will be useless. It seems to me you have an uncycled tank. Adding the extra fish will just add to the amount of waste produced which will increase the amount of ammonia produced. Added the cycle stuff to the tank is a good idea. This turns the ammonia into a less harmful type of ammonia, however it will still show up as ammonia in a test so dont worry about it. If i was you i would do 50% water changes every 2 or 3 days until the tank is cycled. Dont forget to redose with the cycle stuff after each water change