Two nights ago I had the weirdest thing happen in my 55 Gallon Tank.  Before I describe what happened, first I need to explain what fish were in the tank. Here’s a list of fish that I’ve had in the tank for the last few weeks:

2x Female Betta
1x Cardinal Tetra
2x Bala Shark
3x Pictus Catfish
2x Giant Danio
2x Oto Catfish

Besides the fact that the two Giant Danio’s would swim round super fast and sometimes freak out the other fish and the two Pictus Catfish were skittish when I would turn on/off the lights, all the fish seemed to be getting along quite nicely with no fin nipping or aggression.

Then, a few days ago I got a Free 46 Gallon Tank so I decided to get rid of my 20 Gallon tank and put the 46 Gallon in that spot in my room.  To do this I had to transfer the fish that were in my 20 Gallon into the 55 Gallon.  I didn’t think there would be any problem with this, considering all the fish in the 20 Gallon are peaceful fish.  Here is what I had in the 20 Gallon tank:

8x Cardinal Tetra (Small)
1x Oto Catfish
5x Guppies (Small)
1x Pleco

Ok, so I moved those fish into the 55 Gallon.  My main concern was that the 55 Gallon isn’t completely cycled yet so I knew I would have to really watch my Ammonia levels carefully.  However, I’ve been doing daily partial water changes due to the Ich problem I had and it’s not that bad so I figured even if the extra fish put more strain on the biological filter I could temporarily compensate by doing more frequent water changes.  A small price to pay to get a nice 46 Gallon tank setup in place of my small 20 Gallon.

Anyways, I put the fish in there and I kind of figured a couple of the small Tetras might go missing or die but I never expected what happened next.

The following day I check the tank and I noticed that one of my Bala Sharks had the top part of his tail nipped off.  I thought that was pretty odd since I didn’t add in any aggressive fish and the existing fish that have been in the tank were getting along fine.  Then I started looking around and I noticed that a whole bunch of fish were missing!

When I say a whole bunch, I mean EIGHT FISH!  Here’s the casualty list from one night:

2x Female Bettas… GONE!
1x Bala Shark… GONE!
1x Bala Shark… Missing top part of tail.
5x Cardinal Tetras… GONE!

What the heck happened!?  I am pretty sure my 3 Pictus Catfish may be to blame.  They must have gone into a major hunting expedition that night and ate 8 of my fish!  I was devestated to see my Female Bettas gone especially.  They were so fun to watch.

I checked and no the fish didn’t jump out of the tank.  My lid is pretty tightly placed and I looked around the aquarium to make sure they didn’t all jump out.  And no it wasn’t my cat either.  I’m keeping a close eye on the Pictus Catfish and if I find that they are killing all my fish at night, they might just end up getting relocated to the pond in my back yard!

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Yesterday I noticed the Cardinal Tetra in my 55 Gallon Aquarium had these little white spots on his body.  There weren’t many of them, just a few, but I had to take a closer look to see if it could be Ich (White Spot Disease).  Ich (Ichthyophthirius multifiliis), also called White Spot Disease, is a very common parasite amongst aquarium fish and it’s not unusual for you to run into this if you have an aquarium.

Cardinal Tetra With Ich - Not Very Visible in This Picture

Cardinal Tetra With Ich - More Visible on His Fins

The good news is that I caught it really early so I should be able to treat it, hopefully without any fatalities.

Ich goes through three stages in its life cycle.  The white dots you can see on my Cardinal Tetra is Ich in its “trophont” stage of the life cycle.  In this stage it is visible to the naked eye and its actually attached and burrowed under the mucus coating of my fish where it feeds on the body fluid of the poor Cardinal Tetra.

In a few days it will finish feeding and detach itself from the fish, going into the next part of the life cycle called the “tomont” stage.  In this part of it’s life cycle it will swim around the aquarium, looking for a place like my plants or other surfaces to attach itself to so that it can begin to reproduce.  In this stage it basically starts to reproduce like crazy and then within a few days it will turn into hundreds of new little parasites called “thermonts” in the third part of the cycle.

These “thermonts” are then going to swim around my aquarium looking to attach themselves to more of my fish to hide under their mucous coating and start the whole cycle again, each time multiplying and spreading all over my aquarium.

While in the “trophont” stage, the Ich parasite is protected from any type of medication that I can put in the tank, but once it detaches itself from my fish and goes looking for a surface to begin it’s reproductive cycle, it will be succeptible to treatment by medication because it will no longer be hiding in the mucous coating of my fish.

So basically, while its attached to my fish (the trophont stage) it is safe.  As soon as it detaches and tries to reproduce (the tomont and thermont stages) and find other fish to attach to, that’s when this parasite can be treated with medication which is exactly what I’m going to do.

I’ve done a bit of research on the problem and I’m going to treat the Ich (White Spot Disease) problem as follows:

• I’ve done a 20% water change on the tank, because it’s not recommended to do any water changes during the medication process so I figured it would be best to do one right before I start.
• I’m going to increase the water temperature of my tank to about 80-82ºF, which speeds up the life cycle of the parasite, which will get it off my fish faster trying to go into its reproductive cycle.
• I’ve removed the carbon charcoal insert on my canister filter as charcoal will just filter out the meds I’m putting in and we don’t want that.
• I’m adding in a product called Ich X from Aquarium Solutions to kill the parasite. This particular product calls to add about 5ml per 10 gallons of water, so for a 55 Gallon tank I’m supposed to put in about 20-25ml, but I’ve been reading that if you have Tetras in the tank you’re only supposed to use about half the dose, so I only put in about 10ml in.

From what I’ve been reading, you’re supposed to keep treating the tank about every 24hours for a period of at least 3 days after all white spots disappear off the fish.  The product calls for a partial water change with each treatment, so I’m probably going to do a 10-20% water change for the next few days and see how it goes.

This is not bad anyways as I’ve wanted to do some partial water changes to reduce the Ammonia levels in my tank anyways.

Here’s a picture of what Ich-X looks like:

Ich-X from Aquarium Solutions Treats Ich (White Spot Disease)

Actually, while I had my canister filter opened up to remove the carbon charcoal insert, I also took the opportunity to put in some “Ammo Chips” which I’ve been meaning to do for a few days now.  These “Chips” help to reduce the ammonia levels in your aquarium tank.

The biological filter in my aquarium has been taking a while to get established as I go through the initial cycle of my tank and so the Ammonia levels have been sitting at about 1ppm for about a week now and I wanted to help reduce that so I bought these “chips” to add into my filter.  Hopefully it helps to lower the levels a bit.

Here’s that the box looks like:

Ammo-Chips Ammonia Remover

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It’s really interesting to watch the difference in the natural Aquarium Cycle between my 20 Gallon tank and my 55 Gallon tank.  In the 20 Gallon tank the Ammonia levels began climbing starting on the fifth day after setting up my Aquarium and putting in my first set of fish.  The ammonia levels first went to 0.25 ppm for a few days, then climbed to 0.50 ppm for a few days and then went as high as 1.00 ppm for a period of 4 days before going back down to 0.50 ppm and now slowly dropping down to 0.25 ppm and less over the last few days.

Obviously the Cycle in my 20 Gallon Aquarium is well under way.  As for the 55 Gallon, it seems like the same thing is happening except much slower.  It took almost 10 days from setup and putting in fish to get the Ammonia levels to start going up.  They first climbed to 0.25 ppm for a few days, then 0.50 ppm for a few days and now have been at 1.00 ppm for about three or four days.

I’m keeping an eye on the Ammonia levels every day to make sure they don’t end up going any higher than 1.00 ppm.  I’ve also been adding in a few cap fulls (5-15ml) of Cycle into the tank on a daily basis to help establish a healthy population of beneficial bacteria.  My tests also show that my Nitrate levels have started going up as well in the last few days which means that the bacteria that convert Ammonia into Nitrate are starting to form nicely.

I did also do a 20% water change today in hopes that it will help to lower the Ammonia levels a bit.  I’ll test the water again tomorrow to see what’s happening.  So far the fish seem to be doing fine at the 1.00 ppm levels of Ammonia but I don’t want to stress them out too much so if the levels go up any higher than that I’ll do another partial water change while I wait for the biological filter Cycle to establish itself.

I also picked up a school of 8 Baby Cardinal Tetras for my 20 Gallon tank the other day and they seem to be doing very well in that tank so far.  I may end up either putting them in my 55 Gallon once it finishes Cycling, or I may move the one adult Cardinal Tetra I have in the 55 Gallon right now into the 20 Gallon tank.  I don’t like it being there by itself.  Tetras prefer to live in schools so I think the single one I have in the 55 Gallon is lonely right now.

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I’ve added more fish to both of my Aquariums in the last week.  I bought 3 Cardinal Tetra’s, 3 Bala Sharks, 3 Otto Catfish, and one really cool looking Adonis Pleco.  For some reason I lost 2 Tetras and 1 Bala Shark the very first night, but the rest of the fish have had no problems and it’s been almost a week now.

I ended up putting one of the Otto’s in my 20 Gallon as I’m starting to grow some algae in there so I hope he starts to clean that up a bit.  Also, my younger brother Bart gave me 3 fairly sized Pictus Catfish and a Pleco the other day.  I put the 3 Pictus Catfish in my 55 Gallon tank and the Pleco in the 20 Gallon.  He can have a feast with all the algae in there.

Here are some pics:

One of My Pictus Catfish

Another Angle of My Pictus Catfish

My Lonely Survivor Cardinal Tetra. He Needs Some Buddies.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate Levels and finally in the last couple of days the Ammonia levels in my 20 Gallon have started to go down rather quickly, so it looks like my cycle in that tank is coming along nicely.  As for the 55 Gallon, the Ammonia has just started going up in the last few days and today I noticed my Nitrites have gone up so the Cycle is just beginning in that tank.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the Ammonia levels to make sure they don’t go up too high.  Also, I picked up this Filstar Zeolite Ammonia Remover Cartridge for my Rena Filstar xP3 Filter.  It’s supposed to help keep your Ammonia levels from getting too high in new Aquarium setups and from hitting sudden spikes later on.

I’ll measure my Ammonia levels over the next few days and report back how effective it is.

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