First of all, thanks to everyone for their advice so far with my tank.
Today was my first water change, and I'm sad to say, it did NOT go well.
Background:
My tank is a 45G Tall (3' long), sandy substrate, rocky rock, Tang tank. I added 4 L. Stappersi on last Saturday. One did not survive the night, but was floating feebly the moment I put him in, so I figure he was probably in bad shape to begin with. The remaining three did fairly well, as far as I could, spreading out over the 3' of space and claiming their own territories. The most dominant of the three would often bully the other two out of their own territories, but nothing bad, no nipped fins or tails. Everyone was eager to eat when fed.
So, today I decided to do my first water change. I removed about 25-30% of the water, sucking up what debris I could (almost none). I took apart the canister filter and rinsed the filter media in water I'd drained from tank, having read somewhere that rinsing the sponges in tap water might kill of the bacteria within.
I added just under a capful of Prime to the tank, before refilling it with tap water, pegged at the same temp as the water in the tank (~79degrees). I restarted the filter.
Almost immediately, I noticed 2 of the 3 stapps were on the sandy bottom, gasping. Interestingly, it was the largest and the smallest of the group. The medium stap was swimming around normally, pushing sand around shells, etc. I turned off the light for a couple hours to try and reduce stress. After about 2 hours, I turned the lights back on, and left the apartment to get some work done.
When I returned 4 hours later, the largest stapp was dead in the corner. I can't find the smallest. The medium one is acting completely the same as before, pushing sand around, eating eagerly, etc.
Finally, here are my water parameters, taken this evening after discovering my dead fish:
PH: 7.9
KH: 10
GH: 11
Nitrite: .25
Nitrate: 15
Am: .25
I realize that Nitrates and Am. should be zero, but I think that there's a healthy dose of Am. in the water, and nitrite levels were a bit elevated since adding the fish on Sat.
So, any thoughts on what happened? Was it the stress of seeing the python tear apart the sand structures the dominant stap had spent so much time creating? Are my parameters that deadly? If so, why is the sub-dom stap apparently unaffected?
Thanks for reading this,
Duncan
Today was my first water change, and I'm sad to say, it did NOT go well.
Background:
My tank is a 45G Tall (3' long), sandy substrate, rocky rock, Tang tank. I added 4 L. Stappersi on last Saturday. One did not survive the night, but was floating feebly the moment I put him in, so I figure he was probably in bad shape to begin with. The remaining three did fairly well, as far as I could, spreading out over the 3' of space and claiming their own territories. The most dominant of the three would often bully the other two out of their own territories, but nothing bad, no nipped fins or tails. Everyone was eager to eat when fed.
So, today I decided to do my first water change. I removed about 25-30% of the water, sucking up what debris I could (almost none). I took apart the canister filter and rinsed the filter media in water I'd drained from tank, having read somewhere that rinsing the sponges in tap water might kill of the bacteria within.
I added just under a capful of Prime to the tank, before refilling it with tap water, pegged at the same temp as the water in the tank (~79degrees). I restarted the filter.
Almost immediately, I noticed 2 of the 3 stapps were on the sandy bottom, gasping. Interestingly, it was the largest and the smallest of the group. The medium stap was swimming around normally, pushing sand around shells, etc. I turned off the light for a couple hours to try and reduce stress. After about 2 hours, I turned the lights back on, and left the apartment to get some work done.
When I returned 4 hours later, the largest stapp was dead in the corner. I can't find the smallest. The medium one is acting completely the same as before, pushing sand around, eating eagerly, etc.
Finally, here are my water parameters, taken this evening after discovering my dead fish:
PH: 7.9
KH: 10
GH: 11
Nitrite: .25
Nitrate: 15
Am: .25
I realize that Nitrates and Am. should be zero, but I think that there's a healthy dose of Am. in the water, and nitrite levels were a bit elevated since adding the fish on Sat.
So, any thoughts on what happened? Was it the stress of seeing the python tear apart the sand structures the dominant stap had spent so much time creating? Are my parameters that deadly? If so, why is the sub-dom stap apparently unaffected?
Thanks for reading this,
Duncan
