HELP! Major fish tank problems?
Remember, you’re keeping a water tank with fish in it, not a fish tank, your job is to care for the water, not necessarily just the fish. Leaving a tank run empty with a bit of bacteria supplement won’t cycle your tank. I got a Marineland Eclipse 6 (6 gallon tank)and added gravel, decor, live plants, a heater , everything a fish would need. You need to let you take "cycle" it can take 1-4 months, but once you build up the good bacteria in your tank your fish will be healthier and a lot more resilient. Right, it’s probably a good thing you went back to square one as you are now probably realising fish tank ownership is rather a steep learning curve. Then your only problem will be MTS – or multiple tank syndrome, we all end up suffering from it. Being a fish Hobbyist can certainly be hard sometimes but vigilance and patience is key. All I wanted was a fish tank for my birthday in October. the best way is to first assemble your tank-gravel, live plants, water heater, thermometer, decorations, etc. You’ll need a master test kit (such as the API master test kit) to know when your tank is ready. Now that my tank has been running for a couple weeks I’ve noticed little white dots on my decor and they are clear and can swim around on the decor. I added water conditioner, let the tank run for a whole week, and did all the start up stuff. It sounds like you actually cleaned your tank too much…by sterilizing everything you killed not only the bad stuff, but the good bacteria as well. I bought ALL new aquatic plants, scrubed the tank equipent, and rinsed everything with steamin hot water (this took just about the whole entire day. As for those little white things, as someone else said, they sound like planaria or nematodes, generally harmless and only reproduce to such proportions that you notice them when there’s excess biological material in the tank. They require a food source, which means there must be excess food wastes in the tank to support them. When your tank is diseased you can do it every 24 hours while treating the water. I treated the tank with this major parasite killing medicine but she died within a week. My next step then was to clean out the tank to get rid of the parasites (after the medicine had worn off). It happened because your tank was not ready. Have a read of these on how to properly cycle a tank. The planaria won’t hurt the fish, but they are a symptom of too much gravel containing too much uneaten food, and that is not good for fish. Although they do not harm fish, they love to feast on eggs, and therefore are dangerous if breeding egglaying fish. You need to feed the bacteria, nuture it, let it grow to healthy proportions only THEN can you add fish. This will help give the good bacteria time to build up to help create an environment safe for fish. Your first mistake was probably adding fish too soon. I thought I was almost ready to get a new fish. It may take several days of gravel washing to get your gravel really clean. Clean your gravel every day with the Gravel Washer. My first fish was a female betta....
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