Excessive Chemicals?

[MoliroMan]

Hi All!

I keep a few Tropheus colonies and every week i change 33% of the water.

I also add all these chemicals:

- Seachem Rift lake salt and Tanganyka buffer. Some Epsom Salts.

- Hagen Cycle and Waste control.

- Prime and Sera Aquatan

- Leaf Zone

- Geoliquid for African Cichlids.

I also recently started experimenting with Seachem Clarity which seems to actually work!

What i want to ask is:

- Am i adding too many chemicals?

- If yes, what should i cut out of my weekly routine?

- I recently bought a Ph meter and have found i am needing to add a lot more buffer than i use to eventhough i have coral sand substrate/limestone rocks and add Rift lake salt. My pH is around 8 which i know is Ok. But i try to increase it to 8.5. What can i do to reduce the amount of salts/buffers i use since the Seachem stuff is so expensive!

- Do i need Aquatan if i use Prime?

- Do i need Waste control if i am using Clarity?

- Is Leaf Zone a good all round plant fertiliser? (i keep Anubias,val and Rock fern).

- Finally i have been experimenting with Seachem Garlic Guard appetite enhancer for my Tropheus recovering from bloat. It seems to be working. Have u guys had any experience with this product?

Thanks guys!

Dave

[Link2Hell]

Hi Dave

Why do you want to reach 8.5pH when you have the tank stable at 8.0 and the fish are happy ?

I would be more interested in the carbonate hardness as this will be what determines the stability and end pH of the water parameters

You only need to use one declorinator so Prime or Aquatan, you decide

Personally I like Prime

Waste control and Clarity hmmmm sound like floculants to bind particulate residue for the filter to trap easier .......... pick one

Leaf zone is a plant fertilizer that I'm told is quite good, but I don't know if it effects hardness being that fertilisers are usually organic and organic compounds tend to reduce hardness ........... plants do need some fertilizer, try reducing the dosage or feeding frequency and check the results

Bloated Tropheus, seems that the frequency of this should be reducing dramatically with all the info available on the subject

Refer to Steves Tropheus site where it is examined to the point of running a survey on the disease

I'm a firm believer that you will have minimal probs with bloat if you follow a strict feeding routine of vege based foods mixed with high fibre low protien food like Goldfish flakes, small amounts of invertabrates like shrimp and wrigglers can be feed but in small amounts, irregularly as a suppliment

I also liked to run new fish through a treatment of Octazin for flagellated protozoa that I consider part of the bloat problem, now a prob that Octazin is no longer imported, Flagyl should be considered as a replacement

I found if you can control this stage then the secondary bacterial side of the disease is minimized and the recovery % is better

L2H

[MoliroMan]

Thanks L2H!

I just checked my water parameters again:

pH 8.5

KH 340

GH 500

Nitrate 5ppm

Is my Gh too high? Should i do something about it?

I used Aquatan because of the B vitamins which supposedly reduce stress during water changes. I guess i would be using prime from now on, since u need so much aquatan per water change (10ml per 40L).

Waste control claims to solubilise wastes so it is easier for the bacteria to digest and filter to remove. Clarity is a flocculant. But it also stains filter sponges and fluid bed filter sand brown as well!! With the waste control, it also causes a ammonia spike when it solubilises the waste so i guess it is no good for Tropheus.

I have tried feeding my Tropheus one cube of Hikari frozen brine shrimp a week and also tried new life spectrum pellets (thoroughly presoaked in water) but in both cases after a while i noticed one or two cases of bloat. So i have stuck to a spirulina only diet.

Thanks

Dave

[Link2Hell]

Hi Dave

As you can see the gH is 500ppm and that will give you your 8.5pH

Personally I feel there is no real need to try and attain levels so high unless the fish are wild caught or require these parameters for successful breeding (O.nasuta are a species that do require high hardness) after being tried unsuccessfully at lower parameters that are within the range

ALWAYS change parameters gradually as too large a change can cause any thing from blindness to death in the fish

Remember that high pH levels can multiple any filter bacteria problems to toxic levels in super quick time check a chart for pH and ammonia relativity

Nitrate is 5ppm and you say that Clarity has cause spikes hmmmm ....... one less additive I would consider using with results like that when you link it to pH levels

Maybe using Clarity while cycling as a filter seeding addition on a new tank to start an ammonia spike for the bacteria to feed on is more how I would use it unless it is overloading the bacteria in your filter system ?

What filter you running ?

Waste control breaks organics down to level that bacteria can process quicker ?

The question I ask is why with all these bacteria support additives do you get spikes when adding Clarity ...... good filter maintainence would do the same job I would think rather than having the media gunked up in additives

Geo liquid is another "maintainence reducer" that never seems to have scientific results to back the claims, I have used it and haven't noted any specific benefits more than what other floculants do (I consider it a floculant) having said that I have tried it to seed gut bacteria in catfish

I have kept and bred Tropheus from 1985 to about 1990 in water that ranged from 7.5-8.0pH and carbonate hardness from 50 - 180 kH in temps from 20*C - 26*C (high temps seem to stress Tropheus into more aggressive outbursts)

and found that if the fish are happy growing and breeding in lower parameters then leave the water where it is

They don't care and you have less expenses to cover

For food use any of the vege/spirolina based flakes OSI, Sera, HBH all have good quality foods in this line

Mix in some Goldfish flakes as they usually have high fibre and low protein, check the label for low protein yo want to use these flakes to cut the vege flake and add fibre to make up 15-20% of the volume

Par boiled veges are another feed you should consider

I prefer not to feed pellets to Tropheus as most will expand not good when in a fishes intestines IMO especially one with a long intestinal tract like Tropheus

Wafers and discs are a better idea as they allow the fish to graze

I would reduce the amount of buffers used on the tank and get the parameters down to 7.8-8.0 pH and kH to betwen 200-300ppm GRADUALLY ...... but like all I have posted these are my opinions and experiences and it is best to form you own from info and experience from multiple sources

Hope this has given you some ideas to consider

L2H

[MoliroMan]

Thanks for L2H for taking the time to answer all my questions.

i must admit i don't measure my kH and GH much, only my pH. The reason why the pH is so high is because i recently added more Rift lake salt and buffer. I will reduce the amount of these in the future. I was just experimenting to see if the higher pH will trigger them to breed.

I think i wasn't very clear in my last past. Clarity doesn't cause an ammonia spike. Waste control can since it breaks down wastes. That is why they recommend u use it with cycle. I just thought it would be a bad idea to get an ammonia spike with Tropheus. The reason i tried using clarity is that my new 4 by 2 by 2 tank which has been cycled for 6 weeks now still looked a bit cloudy, not crystal clear like my 5 foot tank. Once i used clarity, there was a noticable difference.

For filtration i have 2 eheim 2217, one eheim prof II 2028 and 2 Otto internal filters (2000Lph, one connected to a fluidised bed filter). I guess i am overdoing it a bit, but this is nothing compared to my 5 footer which also has a UV filter and overhead aquaone wet dry filter. I use fine filter wool and also purigen. No carbon.

I have mixed feelings about Geoliquid. I just started to use it again since it sometimes triggers my fish to spawn. I know it may all be psychological but aren't we all obsessive compulsive?

I keep my Tropheus at 26 degrees and notice they are not swimming around very much. May be because there is a rather large dominant male who has claimed half the tank. I have 3 separate rock piles, but they seem not to socialise much like my other colonies. Should i lower the temperature? Also they tend to move around more one i turn off the light. Are they afraid of the light? i use one 4ft NEC triphosphor and one Arcadia marine white fluorescent tube.

I use all the leading brands of spirulina flake. Have stopped giving pellets. Tried HBH spirulina wafer but had an incident of bloat so stopped. Didn't know gold fish flakes were good for Tropheus. Any brand in particular? Would u feed brine shrimp? i also feed them cucumber/zucchini.

I will try lowering my Gh/Kh as u suggested and see what happens.

thx

Dave