Question on new 125g setup

I have one in my plated tank and it's pretty much broken now. Now I have unsightly vertical tubes coming from the gravel.

 

Congrats on getting all of your equipment and yes stay away from UGF I think they are more of a pain than they are worth.

Remember go slow on adding your stock and get hardy fish while you are cycling.

 

Tank is up with some "test" fish. If they survive, we will get the rest and I will post pictures.

 

Got my tank up and populated now. I still have some work to do and I am looking for some fake coral inserts to hide the heater. Might add more plants but I don't want to many to hide the fish.

We have the following in the tank.

1 large Koi Angel Fish (black)
1 Pearl Angel
1 Gold Angel
5 Long fin serpae
5 Candy Cane Tetra
3 Roseline Sharks
2 Clown Loaches
5 Green Glow Tetras
2 Rainbow Fish
3 Silver Dollars

Here is a little video of it.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25731808/FishTank.MOV

 

looks really nice! Angelfish were always my favorite fish when I kept FW.

 

Well, I am pretty frustrated right now with this tank. We have lost 20 fish and we can tell the last 5 are about to die. We have been hit with the following.

HIGH Ammonia
Ick disease
Bacteria Bloom

I am about to throw in the towel. I am not sure what else to do. We have been medicating for the Ick and even raised the temp to 81 degrees as recommended by our LFS. Did not help.

We have used AmmoLock and it is not helping. Have have changed out the water several times and the ammonia level does not go down at all.

We now almost over night have super cloudy water which seems to be a bacteria bloom. They say add more chemicals to combat that. But I am already adding tons of chemicals for the ammo, ick, and water changes and they don't seem to be helping.

This really sucks because I have had freshwater tanks in the past with cheap filters and never changing the water and never lost a fish. This time I invest in a VERY EXPENSIVE filter (Fluval G6), test water, buy all the right stuff and its a losing battle.

I think I am about to throw in the towel, let the last 5 die, drain the tank and put a lizard in the darn thing.

Can anyone tell me there is hope? We love having the fish tank up and running, but we just can't seem to get the water level where it needs to be. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks.

 

Ouch!!!

Terribly sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, we see this ourselves all too often here with some of our new clients.

Honestly, I think you may have added way too many fish way too early. Tends to be a major problem.

our suggestion:

you have 2 major issues to deal with. 1: Infection. 2: Water quality.


now the problem for you, is that you cannot fix one problem without contributing negatively to the other.

Your main game plan should be to first fix the water quality issue. This means addressing the cycling of your system. And because of disease and meds, you should remove all the fish from the tank. Simply remove them all. Period. Take'm back, give'em away, whatever, they have to be gone.

Next, stop dosing ich-meds. Most are highly toxic to your nitrifying bacteria. Thats why when you're medicating, the water quality is not improving. You are basically killing off your bacteria cultures. So let the aquarium cycle empty for at least a month, preferably 2. You want the bacteria culture to repopulate(just drop in a little bit of fish food to feed the bacteria once/week) and without fish in the aquarium, the parasites will die off w/o the use of meds.


After the allotted time has passed and you're looking to add new fish, use these general guidelines for picking out new livestock.

A: dont buy livestock that are infected(i know, right). This also means dont buy livestock that is in the same aquarium system as infected fish. So if you're looking at an aquarium, and all the fish in tank A are great but some of the fish in tank B are not and they are all part of one store filtration system, then dont buy anything from either tank.

B: Quarantine.

C: If you cannot quarantine, "Dip" your fish prior to introducing them into the aquarium. MedFinn is probably the easiest and safest way to dip FW fish prior to introduction.

D: Use quality foods vs the cheapest flakes you can buy (ie: frozen is always best imho, but manufacturers like Omega One make some of the best dried food on the market)