Please Help Me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PAT RICKELS · 09-22-2006, 11:31 AM

I had an "expert" from over 100 miles away to come to my home and set up a 125 gallon tank in my bedroom. He has a thriving saltwater business and so I felt very confident in his expertise. When he came he was raving about "Stability" stating that I could FULLY stock my aquarium with ANY fish I so chose within a week. I said "That sounds too good to be true" and he assured me he knew what he was talking about. I originally had a 55 in my bedroom, so I moved mine to my son's bedroom and started a new 55 at work. My son already had a 29 gallon in his room....so now I have a total of 4 aquariums. The 125 and 55 at work started turning EXTREMELY cloudy during the last week or two. So-called "experts" told me it was because I wasn't using reverse osmosis water and I believed them. Then my fish started getting sluggish. I had just put mangroves in the tanks - so I didn't even consider the tanks were "spiking", but decided to test the water just to see - and the nitrates and nitrites were through the ROOF!!! I immediately did water changes (LEVELS ARE STILL WAY TOO HIGH) and crammed all the fish in the orginal 55 and 29 gallon aquariums (which are stable). Luckily they are all OK as of today, but I know it's just a matter of time before I start having problems in these tanks. PLEASE HELP IMMEDIATELTY. The 125 in my bedroom and the 55 at work are now empty. The 55 & 29 in my sons room have:
55: (1) Volitan Lionfish (1) Red Snapper (1) Porcupine Puffer (1) Purple Tang (1) Humu-Mumu (9) Damsels (1) Pacific Blue Tang (1) Panther Grouper
29: (1) Achilles Tang (1) Yellow Tang (1) Pacific Blue Tang (1) Lookdown (1) Clown Trigger (1) Dogface Puffer (1) Longfin Heniochus Bannerfish (1) Pajama Cardinal (2) True Percula (1) Black Clown (1) Psychadelic Manderin
I KNOW it's ALOT of fish - but right now they're very cramped so I need so major help ASAP! ALL of these fish are juvi's (except the Purple and yellow tangs) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP!

ahill3780 · 09-23-2006, 02:58 AM

Welcome to FishTankForums Pat!

Sounds like a pretty common scenario. Well I'm no "expert" so I hope my advice will help.

You should be ok with the overstocked tanks for right now. Since you have suitable accomodation for them long term they can rough it out for the short term in the established tanks. I would suggest the following while they are in there though:

Change out 15% of the water in both tanks every 3 days to help keep the waste levels suppressed. This will help with the sudden increase in waste production, preserving your biological filtration.
Cut back feeding to every second or third day. This will help keep waste production down further. The fish will be ok with this temporarily.

As for the new 55 and 120 the first thing to do is fill them back up with saltwater if they're still empty. Its fine that you drained it, just know that 100% water changes are rarely needed. 50% is sufficient to eliminate a lot of excess nutrients if you do them every week for a few weeks.

Your tank has to be properly cycled in order to deal with the biological strain the fish are going to place on it. A week is just not going to cut it no matter what anyone tells you. You can get by with 1 after a week, but only hardy specimens that can survive the cycle period. But keeping more should not be accomplished too quickly even after the cycle period.

If you've never been introduced to the cycle before then see the following link. All saltwater aquarists are introduced to this in the beginning. Click Here

Cloudiness is typical in new setups during the cycle period. With such high nitrite levels in the tank I would suspect you were looking at a bacterial bloom. These are nothing to panic over really, just remove the fish while the nitrite levels are present. Add them back in slowly, one by one once the nitrites are down and the ammonia is 0.

You want to preserve the newly raised bacteria in the tank and allow them sufficient time to grow large enough populations to balance your tank. For tanks that are going to house lots of livestock it is essential to add them in one at a time and allowing the bacteria a week or more to adjust themselves to the higher bioload. If you do this for every fish then you should see a minimum of bacterial blooms.

HTH,
Aaron