It started on a club
meeting night for the Greenock & District Aquarist Society
when a request was put forward for every member to write
an article on setting up a community tank. I felt duty bound
as I'm always moaning about more articles for our Newsletter.
Luck would have it that I was about to set up a tank for
my juvenile fish that were out of the fry stage.This I suppose
couldn't be classed as a community tank, but my experiences
would not be to faraway from that.
The story starts with a 4' 0" x 12" x 12"
tank in my fishhouse which I had had trouble with for the
past 12 months. I had an assortment of Characins, Anabantids,
Corydoras, a Synodontis and my problem fish Hoplosternum
littorale. I had grown them on from small and they were
about 4 inches in length, but about a year ago they started
getting white spots over the body similar to white spot
but it affected the edges of the fins, going white and stringy
with the barbels wearing away and mucus coming of the body,
it only affected the Hoplo's and no other fish. I treated
with neat Acriflavine and it cleared it up for about 2 weeks
before returning again. I tried other treatments but with
no avail. So this went on, as I explained earlier, for about
a year and I could not put any other fish in the tank for
fear of spreading the disease. I thought enough is enough,
I needed this tank for my young Corys which were getting
crowded in my 18" x 12" x 12" breeding set-ups.
I had a spare 10 gall. tank empty in the fishhouse and decided
to move all the fish into this tank even although it was
a bit on the small side for this purpose.
I moved all the fish to this tank then emptied all the water
out of the 4' tank and disposed of it, I didn't want to
leave any bacterial infection to return, that is why I threw
out the sand that I had on the bottom, rocks and pipe work,
I also washed out the filters in water taken from another
tank. I scrubbed the tank down thoroughly with salt and
warm water and left it to dry over a few days. I then filled
the tank with chlorine free tap water and laid a thin bed
of sandpit sand, mixed with well washed bird sand, which
has pieces of coral scattered through it so to keep the
pH.up towards the neutral ( 7. 0) mark, as I find with the
water being so soft (Io dGH) it tends to take a nose-dive
down to dangerous levels. The water has no buffering qualities,
it might be good for breeding certain fish but it does have
its problems. I then added two pots planted with Pygmy
Amazon swords, two lengths of small bogwood and a flat stone
on top to weigh down the wood plus a plant pot on its side.
I deliberately didn't want to put too much in the tank as
I wanted to observe the fish and give them enough room to
grow on. The filter capacity was a small internal filter
and a corner filter, a bit under filtered perhaps but it
would have to do until my finances allowed otherwise. I
had set up the tank on a Saturday so I thought that I would
just move the fish on the Sunday as the filters had been
running for 24 hrs. I decided on hindsight to check the
water first and I'm glad I did, I checked Ammonia(NH3),
Nitrite(N02-) and Nitrate(N03-), I thought they wouldn't
be too bad as the filters should still have the good bacteria
left from the previous set-up. How wrong can you be, the
Ammonia was sky-high at 1.5mg per litre of water, the safe
level being under 0.25mg per litre? Nitrite was tested at
0.3mg per litre of water but I realised that it would certainly
rise to dangerous levels once the Ammonia levels dropped.
The Nitrate level was 12.5mg per litre of water, this again
would rise after the Nitrite levels had risen and dropped.
I then decided to leave the moving of the fish for the meantime.
The bacteria left in the filters was probably not enough
to deal with the new water, base medium and decorations
but I had no choice as to keeping the old water and sand
as I did not want the problems I had to reappear, I also
added a pinch of flake now and then to help in establishing
the colony of bacteria.
Below is the table of readings that I carried out over the
next 2 weeks.
19/1/97
|
Ammonia : 1.5mg. per litre
Nitrite : 0.3mg. : :
Nitrate : 12.5mg.
: :
|
21/1/97 |
Ammonia : 1.5mg. : :
Nitrite : 0.12mg.
: :
Nitrate : 20mg . : :
|
25/1/97 |
Ammonia : 0.25mg. : :
Nitrite :
0.25mg : :
Nitrate : 25mg. : :
|
01/2/97 |
Ammonia : 0mg. : :
Nitrite : 0.25mg.
: :
Nitrate : 25mg. : :
|
As you can see as the Ammonia levels drop the Nitrite levels
rise and take quite a while to drop while the Nitrates went
steadily up although in an established tank this can go
down with constant water changes.
Over the coming weeks the Nitrite levels should drop significally
as the Nitrification cycle starts operating properly. I
added the young Corys when the ammonia levels dropped; I
also added another corner filter from an established tank
to speed up the bacterial process. I suppose I could have
added a starter culture purchased from many pet shops for
setting up a new tank, but I don't like to add any stuff
that is not natural in my tanks, as many of my friends will
testify (these products tend sometimes to give your test
kits false readings, especially Ammonia). The one lesson
learned is to certainly keep and use your test kits if you
are in any doubt about your water quality and only add a
small amount of fish during the Nitrification cycle (four
to six weeks).The Hoplos that I moved stayed clear of infection
for about two weeks, then the disease appeared again. I'm
beginning to think that this is a problem associated with
litorale alone and I shall investigate further in the future
about this.
This might be a bit of a long winded story when I was only
asked to write about setting up a community tank but this
is a case history of an actual event, so I would think invaluable
when setting up any tank.
Produced in “The Angelfish no.10, 1997. Publication
of the Greenock & District Aquarist Society. Also online
at www.scotcat.com
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