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Ok guys, i have had a blue ram in an established tank now for over 3 weeks and he has been fine, swimming about, fighting for food, the usual. I come home today and find him dead on the bottom of the tank. i have no idea why. I checked my water parameters and have found the following

PH - 7.8
Ammonia - 0
Nitrate - 20
Phosphate - 1 - 2.5
nitrites <0.1

Last water change was on sunday and i did 1/4 of the tank so not to drain the bio load with no change in the filter.only difference is that there was a high concentration of hair algae

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
http://thetanklog.blogspot.com/ - [ Thanks to ScottF ]
http://www.natureaquariumclubofutah.com/main.html

Notoriously water sensitive fish, blue rams. Might be the detectable nitrite did him in, but there could also be other reasons.

Whats the size, stocking and equipment in that tank?

Size of Tank was a 10 Gallon

Stocking
5 Glow Light Tetras
Skunk Botia
Small Pleco
and the Ram

The Filtration was done by a AQ 50 I beleive it is now, which is built for a 30 Gal Tank

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
http://thetanklog.blogspot.com/ - [ Thanks to ScottF ]
http://www.natureaquariumclubofutah.com/main.html

Hi there,
My aggreement is with Longhair,
its probably poor water conditions that did the Ram in.
Lets examine your stocking of the tank in more Depth:

5 Glowlight tetras - 1.5 inches each
1 Skunk Botia - 6-7 Inches at maturity and highly aggressive and territorial.
1 small pleco - probably a common pleco - size 18-24 inches at maturity.
Blue Ram - 3inches at maturity.

So, in a 10 gallon tank you have a potential 42 inches of fish. Even though I dont buy into the 1 inch per gallon rule, its clear to see youre overstocked by a huge amount.
Plecos and loaches produce massive amounts of waste.
It is simple to see that by your testable amount of NitrItes (which should always be 0 in a cycled tank) suggests that there is often small amounts of ammonia, likely produced by the pleco and loach.
Blue rams are highly senstive fish, even .1 ppm of ammonia or nitrItes could kill this fish.

The tank, with 5 glowlights and 1 blue ram alone is fully stocked.
I would remove the pleco and botia and return them to the LFS in exchange for another blue ram if you wish.

Another idea too is that the skunk botia is feeling cramped in his space (this fish can easily take 30 gallons of space as territory just for itself), and being armed with potentially lethal eye barbs (ive been stabbed by them myself), it would be easy for this fish to kill your blue ram.

Skunk botia really should be kept in no less than 55 gallons, and are highly recommended to be kept with other semi-aggressive/aggressive fish. I wouldnt keep them with small easily killed fish. Id recommend the Skunk botia as compatible even with fairly large robust cichlids.

Good luck.


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Well it gets worse, both the pleco and the skunk botia are both still under two inches each. However i was looking at the tank tonight and I found one of my glowlights without an eye. I have also found a yellow haze to parts of their scales/skin. Any ideas as they are swimming round great. Am Treating with melafix and prima fix right now.

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
http://thetanklog.blogspot.com/ - [ Thanks to ScottF ]
http://www.natureaquariumclubofutah.com/main.html

The eye was probably eaten by the skunk botia.
In small spaces this fish definitely can and will
kill other fish.
When you stock a tank you need to plan for adult
fish size, not baby fish size.
A skunk botia if well cared for will reach full size
in 1 to 1.5 years, which is 6-8 inches in length.
My only suggestion is to remove the pleco and loach.
After that you will probably see your tank problems disappear.


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Sneaky is right on the money there, you either have to upgrade your tank to something at least 4 times bigger, and even then it will require some tweaking to the stocking, or give away a lot of fish. Overambition often leads to such disasters.

As things are you need to give away some fish, and the difficulty there of course is in which ones to keep and which to give away, obviously you cant give away sick fish, but you can move on the healthy ones, so unfortunately because of the responsibility of the mistake of overstocking, you might not be able to keep the fish you like the most.

All the same though, if you keep things the way they are, you may lose all your fish, and you should never let it get to that. Indeed , until the stocking issues are resolved, administering treatments will probably only delay the inevitable, if the fish are saveable in that situation at all. You may find that administering any treatment does nothing, and the fish become either consistantly ill or injured, and you just wont win.

Act quickly, and dont let a haetis in action kill most of the fish. Do the right thing asap. It makes the difference between a good fishkeeper to be , and an animal abuser.

Break the mold , and save the fish rather than just keeping the survivors. You know it makes sense .

Ok I have listended and taken in what has been said. I will do the following to this tank. Unfortunatly I wont be able to take the fish to the LFS until saturday. However I will remove the pleco and the Skunk Botia and take them to the LFS. So That will leave me with the 5 Head N Tail light tetras in the tank. I will still finish the treatment to try and save the tetras. Once that is done I will re-evaluate the tank and Possibly move the fish to another tank for the time being until I can kill off the snail and Hair algae problem in the tank. Hence the reason for the pleco and skunk botia in the first place. What do you guys think about that idea?

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
http://thetanklog.blogspot.com/ - [ Thanks to ScottF ]
http://www.natureaquariumclubofutah.com/main.html

Sounds like a good idea. The hair algae and the snails will most likely be down to slight overfeeding, so now some of the fish will be gone give them light feeds, the meds, and hopefully all will be well.

Unfortunately the hair algae problem can only be solved by changing the water conditions , the lighting, or by fish that grow larger than your tank can handle.

Hair algae is tough to deal with. Common plecos and skunk botia do not eat this kind of algae that I know of.

I would highly recommend an Apple Snail (p. bridgessi) for algae in a small tank. My 2 jade green apples do a pretty fair job on my 10g tank keeping it algae free - though the cherry shrimp do a fair job as well.

What you could do, if youre having a snail problem,
is get a small snail eating fish - like a blue ram.

For algae, you could consider an apple snail or two,
or maybe a trio of Otocinclus Catfish.

To get rid of algae there are other solutions too - feed your fish much less, reduce lighting by several hours a day, use black construction paper on back and ends of tank to block external light from windows, increase water change frequency and amount, add more live plants that grow fast and use up the nutrients algae needs to survive.
This wont get rid of 100% of the algae, but can reduce it by at least 75%.



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Well i appreciate those awesome ideas. Now all i gotta do is get a hold of those snails or Oto's lol. I want to put plants in there to make it nice but the hair algae kept ruining the plants.

The tank is right next to my kitchen window and its hitting the side. i tried to reduce the sunlight by adding the blue plastic wrap that has the plants on it. But you might be right by adding something that doesnt let any light in at all. What would you guys suggest the right amount of artificial light should be for this small of a tank. My 30 gal to be honest is on from about 830 am till about 10 at night. I was told before to have 12-14 hrs of light but im guessing that is too much?

Thanks for all your help btw

Thanks for your input as always, Shane
http://thetanklog.blogspot.com/ - [ Thanks to ScottF ]
http://www.natureaquariumclubofutah.com/main.html