Mistakes made, but I thought I was finally doing everything right
- Thread starter eohippus
- Start date
I have big box store corys that are 6 years old....I think something is wrong with your added water quality or chemicals in the water/bucket still 
I've never seen these red bumps, and I have all sorts of leaf and wood shrapnel that my corys could cut themselves on. They don't though, and I've never seen the red spots. Whenever I use a bucket it is 100% fish only. I bought 5x 5g orange homer buckets from Home Depot, boiled them out with boiling water to sanitize, and haven't had a problem with them ever. I think your issue is an outside source contaminating your water, along with the low flow setting on your filter. I have a flow problem in my 40breeder, which I cut down by placing a barrier in front of the water flow. I still get 80g worth of filtration with no wacky flow rate. I don't want to say one step forward, one backward, but something isn't right with those dead corys
I've never seen these red bumps, and I have all sorts of leaf and wood shrapnel that my corys could cut themselves on. They don't though, and I've never seen the red spots. Whenever I use a bucket it is 100% fish only. I bought 5x 5g orange homer buckets from Home Depot, boiled them out with boiling water to sanitize, and haven't had a problem with them ever. I think your issue is an outside source contaminating your water, along with the low flow setting on your filter. I have a flow problem in my 40breeder, which I cut down by placing a barrier in front of the water flow. I still get 80g worth of filtration with no wacky flow rate. I don't want to say one step forward, one backward, but something isn't right with those dead corys Thanks, Rufloman. I just found another fish store that is within driving distance of my house and one of the employees there seemed to agree with you. He also told me that I'm dosing the water wrong. He said it's 2 drops of Prime per gallon (and showed me a bottle with those instructions on it, which are not on the bottle I own). He suggested leaving the water in the bucket out overnight before adding it to the tank.
If there's something in the water that's not being treated with prime, sitting the water out overnight could help. But sitting out overnight is typically used to allow chlorine to gas off, I don't know if it will help for things that don't show up on your test.
Everything you are doing seems right and your parameters are spot on, so its really hard to say what it could be. . .
Everything you are doing seems right and your parameters are spot on, so its really hard to say what it could be. . .
I doubt Prime could be the culprit - based on my experience using it. I'm really bad about measuring it, and just "eyeball it" when I do water changes. I've overdosed Prime too, both intentionally to combat high ammonia and nitrite while cycling a tank, and accidentally when refilling a tank after a cleaning. I have a bottle that even states you can safely overdose up to 5 times the dose to detoxify ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate.
When I clean my tanks, I usually refill the tank and then dose the tank with Prime. I've never had a problem.
I have several "aquarium use only" buckets, and I only use HOT water to clean them. I started this after discovering that a couple family members were using my tank cleaning bucket for things like washing their vehicles.
When I clean my tanks, I usually refill the tank and then dose the tank with Prime. I've never had a problem.
I have several "aquarium use only" buckets, and I only use HOT water to clean them. I started this after discovering that a couple family members were using my tank cleaning bucket for things like washing their vehicles.
Are you adding anything other than Prime to the water? Anything to alter the pH or hardness, for example? Does the water appear cloudy or bubbly, or in any way not crystal clear? Are there any smells? It does sound like it has something to do with the inbound water, just need to figure out what.
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I'm not adding anything to the water other than Prime. Your question about smells did raise a question in my mind. I have sand on the bottom of the aquarium and I've been gently disturbing the sand in the places where there aren't plants every time I clean the tank. I also got the Malaysian trumpet snail to help me stir things up a bit because of the concern about hydrogen sulfide with sand. But lately I've been getting into the sand a little deeper because it seems really dirty. I use a turkey baster and it acts kind of like a gravel vacuum -- I suck a bunch of sand into it and the dirty water floats to the top while the sand slips back out the bottom. But I definitely can smell that rotten egg smell. So, I've been doing more like 50-75% water changes. Any thoughts?
