I've had the tank set up almost three years, and I fully cycled it to start with - although I did have a bit of a crash a couple of months in when I bought too many new fish. That all got resolved and no obvious problems since then.
I test the water monthly, and everything looks OK but I have a very bad track record of keeping fish alive. I do have a plec who has been in there since month three and seems happy, a few cherry shrimp that were breeding but I haven't seen any new babies for a few months, and I also have a ghost shrimp that's lasted almost the whole life of the tank, but my fish seem to have a very short life expectancy. I'm now down to just three rummy nose tetras and one of them looks a bit poorly.
I wonder if either there's something wrong with my routine, or there's something else that's affecting the water quality?
It is a 60l tank. I do a water change once a fortnight of approx 30%.
I take out one bucket full, and clean one side of the filter in the tank water. (fluval filter). I then empty out another bucket full. I then fill the bucket with tap water (and a bit of water out of the kettle), and add half a cap of Tap Safe. (I was using Prime until recently), leave it for 10 mins, then add it to the water (checking temperature first). I then repeat with bucket two.
I feed the fish daily but with a very tiny amount of flakes (at the moment only 3 small fish so they don't need much).
The water temp always seems fine. I have a thermometer in there.
I have a piece of wood that I bought from a fish store, and I also have some rocks that came with the tank (Second hand). I wondered if they might be a problem?
There are some plants in there. I did recently pull a load out because I was worried they were taking over.
I bought 2 guppies 3 weeks ago. They have both died.
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What am I doing wrong?
3 replies
VagueButlmportant · 06/03/2016 16:38
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