The worst fish keeper ever

I feel like I have lost more fish than any body else, ever.

I started keeping a tank about 4 years ago. It was a simple 12 liter thing with a bubble filter and a couple of gold fish. They died. I got more. They also died.

Then I accidentally "inherited" a three-foot tank, and went out to go buy a heater and a book, and then I dumped a bunch of pretty fishes in the tank, and they surprisingly survived (OK, I let them adjust to the water temperature first), but they were bullying one another and soon I had no fish left.

I added more, but again the skollies were just stressing each other out. It went on for about 6 months before someone told me about "community tanks". I started replacing the fish and eventually had a more-or-less peaceful tank. My fish were still dying.

I learned about water quality, and actually started using Ph-Down (up to this point all I ever used was aqua-safe). My fish kept on dying, in fact the only fish that did not die is a butterfly fish which is, in fact, to this day still alive, the last member of the original skollie-tank, still living in my community tank.

At that point, about two years ago, I experimented with various species - everything from plecostomii to Peters Elephant nose. The tank user a little in-tank mechanical filter, with some slimy-stuff growing on the sponge. Some recommended that I should get a Fluval 205 (I did, but only about 6 months later).

I had an outbreak of little-snails, but eventually got rid of the little buggers.

Then some of my fish started laying eggs on the leaves - I don't know which, but I actually never managed to get fry - suddenly all the fish started dying. Up till this point I always had only one fish dying every two weeks or so. Every single fish died, barring only one Tetra and the butterfly fish. Both of those are still alive.

I then started a new tank from scratch - I took the water in for testing and got told that the hardness is way up, and that this was because of the calcium-line granules I used for a sediment.

So it was time for a new tank. I replaced the sediment with filter-sand, and this time I allowed the water time to build up a culture of bacteria for 4 weeks. I planted new plants, basically re-built the whole tank. But from that day on my tank has never been the same. Fish died much more than they had before.

I've started peat filtering and things got better for a while - probably because I stopped using Ph-down. Over the last 4 months or so I discovered that our tap water now have a low Ph, and I don't actually know what to do about it. I stopped filtering with Peat for now, but it is still very low.

I am going to move house soon, and at that point I will have to re-build my tank: Hopefully I will manage a more stable, healthy community this time round.

 

crap happens man, get yourself some tetra 6 in 1 test strips to test the water for a start this forum wil probably sort u out, theres tons of advice al over the net for aquiriums just keep searching and get yourself a big canisterfilter or build one out of pvc piping so that theres more than enough biological filtration and get some charcoal in there for the chemicals etc....

 

Welcome to TASA hartz

Geesh, I feel sorry for you losing fish like that mate. Where in SA are you based?

Cheers
Dale