Unpredictable Tank

Hi Lee,

In light of all being fine beforehand, your tank not being overstocked, and your water quality being fine, it seems to me as though the deaths are unrelated to the algae. It's most likely due to the new fish - stress of their arduous journey up to arrival and during time at the LFS taking its toll on them, or, if some of your existing fish are now affected, the stress of the addition of the new fish or them bringing in disease.

Water changes tend to be beneficial if unsure what to do next. You could minimise any associated stress for the inhabitants by removing water from near the top of the tank with a jug rather than vacuuming into the substrate with a syphon.

Hope that helps (a bit).

Thanks for the replies. I'll continue to try the water changes.
The reason I've raised the Bluegreen algae as an issue is because that's a bacteria not an algae (that's just it's name). I completely understand algae wouldn't affect fish but as far as this bacteria there have been discrepancies from what I've read.
All tests are fine. Ammonia - 0, nitrite - 0, nitrite 30.
Thanks again

Thanks again for your reply.  I've been using my phone to reply on here and the auto - correct did change it from Nitrate to nitrite.
The Nitrate read 30ppm so it was interesting about some fish preferring 20ppm or less.
I'll keep reading up on the Internet and post on here any findings or updates.
Cheers

It was a rasbora and a ram that died.
My water description is soft but I've added an attachment as I don't fully understand the measurements. Would be grateful if you could take a look.
Cheers

The figure you want from that list is Hardness Clarke at 3.325.

There are a lot of different units for hardness and fish websites use one of two - German degrees aka dH and ppm CaCO₃, usually called just ppm. You'll need to convert your hardness in Clarke degrees into the other two.

3.325 deg Clarke = 2.66 German deg (or dH) and 47.4 ppm.

In other words, very soft.


On your CC list in your signature (and i realise you might not actually have those fish) the only one that might suffer is the snail, especially if you also have low pH. Soft acidic water erodes their shells.




One other figure of note is nitrate. Your water company lists it as 2.84. If your tank is at 30 ppm nitrate, that is too much; you need to bring it down. The general rule of thumb is to keep nitrate from ever getting higher than tap level plus 20 - and yours is tap level plus 27.16. And nitrate is at its highest just before a water change. If your level of 30 was several days before a water change it would have got higher than that.
Reasons for high nitrate include:
Too many fish
Feeding too much food (as left overs decompose to make ammonia which is turned into nitrate)
Water changes not often enough
Water changes not big enough
Not cleaning the substrate if it is gravel (uneaten food and fish poo trapped it in make ammonia -> nitrate)
Having live plants and using a nitrate rich fertiliser



A nitrate of 30 is too high for rams. They also prefer higher temps than other fish, and suffer if kept too cool.