it never rains but it pours !!!

well guys i'm back .... just moved home a week ago and it took until today to sort my new internet connection ....

so i had plenty of time to prepare for the move but had always planned on the aquarium being the final job .

so when the day came , and all the rest of my stuff was moved , i began to drain the tank ( after transferring the fish to a spare tank in an LFS )

Now at this stage i gotta say a huge thanx to seamus for the help with moving the tank ...... because without his help i wouldn't have gotten it home as quick and refilled so easy . ( the external fluval was unplugged for roughly 2 hours )

now in my infinite wisdom i decided a week or two before the move to get rid of my gravel substrate and switch to sand ..

A previous post on the forum lead me to try a 15 kilo bag of play sand from argos , which i thoroughly rinsed before putting into the tank .

so the scene was set ..... the filter was running ... the heater was plugged in ... and all the new water was treated ..... WOT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG ??

well ..... i was under no pressure ( time wise i mean ) to collect my fish from the LFS so i left the tank semi cycle all that saturday evening , and all day on the sunday ...... collected my fish monday afternoon at around 2 pm and brought them straight home .

floated the bags for 15 - 20 mins .... opened the bags , and added in some of the tank water ... bit by bit .... then finally released the fish .

so here's where it all went drastically wrong ( now i hasten to add .... i of course did a full series of tests on the tank water previous to bringing the fish home ... and all was perfect )

Upon releasing the fish from the bags i noticed one or two strange swimming patterns .... namely my lemon tetra's and my thomasi cichlid were tending to lean to one side and swim in circles .

needless to say i knew something was up so i netted the fish again ... into a bucket of warm tap water ... and ran them straight back in to the LFS . the very second they hit the water in the shop tank .... they were all fine again .

the only new variable in the equation was of course my sand substrate .... so i went home with the full intention of stripping the tank , only to find that i had missed 4 fish . So thinking they would meet their doom in the tank i left them alone ....

woke up the following morning and they were still swimming ... so it couldn't have been the sand !!! hmmm

so i left the tank all week , and only today went to recollect my fish .
Huge thank you to gavin in aqua paws in galway for the tip on reintroducing them this time around ...... i left them in the bag of water from the store and drip changed the water with water from my tank , very slowly over a 3 hour period .... all the fish were swimming nicely in the bucket at this stage so i netted them and placed them back into the tank ...

4 hours later and they are all swimming around like nothing happened .

still dunno for sure wot caused the problem and i am slightly peeved at loosing my 10 lemon tetra but at least my breeding pair of keyholes are safe .....

heres a few pics of the tank

Must say the sand substrate is much nicer! Im beginning to think that drip aclimatissation is the way to do it. Last night I didnt exactly do the drip acclimatisation for my RS Shrimp but I dd take about 3 hours and would add water from my tank to the bag over that period. All doing fine still.
I guess fish are just unpredictable really. You were lucky you had a LFS to help you out. Great service thats for sure.
Gavin

I would think it was shock of some kind, a change in pH, temp or a very large change in hardness. The drip method is the best and highly recommended especially for delicate fish.

A pH change of only .5 is a lot for a fish!

Daragh

It sounds like you had a lot on your hands.Great to hear it all worked out and the tank looks great with the sand substrate.I have never heard of drip feeding water into the bag before releasing your fish.When might you use this.

Some people use it all the time,but particularly for delicate fish that may have trouble acclimatising. Similarly if you had fish who water temp may be down after driving home from the LFS (Local as in perhaps an hour away!!),you can do the drip feed method again to introduce the fish slowly to the water change in terms of chemical change and temperature change.

Gavin

I agree re: possible PH shock.

Some of your plants in the foreground look non-aquatic (The ones with the white stripe). You should bin them before they begin to rot and foul your water.

have to say the drip system is the way to go. and over extended period of time.


i would agree it was a problem with pH shock

Martin, sorry to hear about your 10 lemon tetra
I have a few plants that you might be interested in
There all you’re if you want them and I have a few plants that you can take clippings of too if you want just let me know

LB

sounds good donal ... how does next weekend suit ya ?

duzzy1 wrote:

sounds good donal ... how does next weekend suit ya ?

grand, give me a text during the week
I have a few root tabs there that im not using, you can stick a few of them in the sand before you plant

LB

Duzzy....Excuse me if I'm being thick here but...
How did you lose the lemon Tetra's if you netted them all out again..?

Re ...the gradual intro of water from the tank to the LFS bag...Is this not standard Practice...?? I would normally float the bag for 20 mins then start to introduce the tank water into the bag then..., after 30 mins of tank water introduction i would net the fish out of the bag & into the tank,Is this how you would go about it...?
Confused....?....Lar

Lar,
It depends,some people have different way of introducing fish to tanks. For years I floated the bag for about 30 mins and never had any problems,recently over the past year or so Ive done simialar but have also introduced tank water gradually also.
For the more delicate fish I would certainly recommend this process of drip.

Again its different practices for everyone,but as mentioned above in this case,the fish suffered what Im guessing was PH shock.

Gavin

well by the time i netted them ... the tetra's were already dead ...... all my other fish survived but lost my school of lemon tetra