I really don't know where to begin here. I've been doing this since last April and things started out fine - fish only with
live rock tank, 30 gallon, penguin bio wheel filter, eventually added a protein
skimmer. Read Paletta's book (own it) "The New Marine Aquarist" It really helped me.
Then about last July I had a complete die off in my tank. I had been using a quarentine tank, but the employee at That Fish Place advised me against its use saying I would stress the fish. Taking his advice, I placed unquarentined livestock in my system. After a couple weeks, I had a complete die off due to either over population in a young tank, ich or both.
I got my act together and quarentined for 30 days regularly. But now I'm having major issues again and I can't figure it out. I'm about ready to throw in the towel. Here's what's going on can someone PLEASE help me out that has experience in this?
A. Quarentine Tank. This is a 10 gallon tank I had used years ago (maybe 25?) for freshwater fish. Bare bottom,
pvc pipe and plastic planters for the fish to hide. Simple air pump hooked up to a simple sponge filter for bio filtration. This is how the manuals all say to do it. I also keep the
salinity low, typically 1.012.
Lately, I can't seem to keep anything alive for more than a few weeks in the tank. Even more so, it doesn't cycle completely. I clean the tank out after each use with a water and bleach solution. This includes the sponge filter, which I rinse thoroughly along with the rest of the gear. I then cycle it for 4-6 weeks using just a small bit of frozen fish food to rot in the bottom.
Ammonia drops, but I can't get the
nitrites to drop bellow .5. When I ask the local dealer about the cycling issues they tell me I need something living in the tank. This particular dealer only stocks the easier to keep species of fish. I had been having good success with the fish he has - so I purchase a fish. The last two fish devolped velvet and/or ich and died in the third week. Furthermore, they never helped in cycling the tank - the
nitrite levels just would rise and the
nitrates would stay around 10, never going above. The first fish to go was a clown, the most recent one was a 6 line wrasse. Both fish were kept during separate quarentine periods and were extremely healthy up until the 3rd week. The clown developed velvet, the wrasse seemed to get ich. Both fish died shortly after - even though I began to treat the tank with SeaCure
copper treatment. After putting the seacure in, my bio filter just went through the roof. Even partial 1-2 gallon changes didn't seem to bring
ammonia &
nitrites down. That's $50 worth of fish in a period of about 4 months. What am I doing wrong????? How do I properly cycle the quarentine tank? Is the bio filter not big enough? Is the sponge not able to hold bacteria any more due to use in
copper treated water and/or the
bleaching process in breaking down the tank? I could never keep more than one fish in the tank anyhow - this always caused a die off eventually and I learnd to do one fish at a time. That's a SLOW process to stock a display tank.
Needless to say, I did buy a new 10 gal tank at walmart along with a small mechanical/bio filter from Marineland. This will be my new quarentine tank. The old one did start to leak and I was in the process of replacing it when I noticed the wrasse had ich. I'll give it another shot, but I would really like to have some hand holding from someone who has experience in keeping saltwater tanks. I'm hoping your forum can help.
B. Display tank. Has 3 fish, two pajama cardinals and one firefish. Tons of snails and hermit crabs, one arrow crab. The big thing with this tank is that I recently upgraded the light to a 96 watt 50/50 bulb. Bought a 36 inch Coralife fixture to accomodate a future tank upgrade. Coraline alagae was growing great on the rock (about 30 lbs) up until this point. I get my water from the local grocery store which has a Culligan filtration system. Ive tested it numerous times & there's no problem with the water. All my reading in the tank are fine - all zero on
Ammonia,
Nitrite and about 5 on the
Nitrates. Regardless, I now have a tank that is being overcome with hair algae. The crabs (did have about 50 of them) don't seem to eat it, then they just die off. I added a shipment from GARF and that didn't help, made it worse - the GARF Grunge added
diatoms or some kind of brownish algae in to the tank. I now have algae growing in my protein
skimmer (which I empty about every 2-3 days or so). I have algae growing on everything. I scrub it off and it comes back with a vengence.
Basically, between the quarentine tank and the algae issues in my display, I'm about ready to hang it up. I've gone way over budget on all of this spending close to $2k. That's a heck of a lot of money to keep only 3 fish, crabs & snails alive in a tank. All the warnings I've had from people (most of whom NEVER had a fish tank) saying that saltwater is tremendously hard hobby seem to be coming true. The forums and the books lament the loss of hobbists and say that this really isn't as hard as it seems.
Can somebody please help me out before I become a statistic? E-mails are greatly appreciated, starting with the quarentine issues especially.
Thanks.
Michael
