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Tank of death

852 views 7 replies 6 participants last post by  tetra73 
#1 ·
At which point do you decide that a tank is just cursed, tear it down, and start over?

I have a 6 gallon Petco tank that seems to kill almost anything I put in there. It was originally home to a fancy aquabid betta. The betta was constantly sick, in and out of the "hospital" tank. He had some sort of crazy flesh eating fin rot that would eat away his fins overnight. I've never seen anything like that before or since. He finally died a couple months ago from dropsy, poor little guy.

Since then I've tried turning the tank into a super tiger tank with ottos. No go. I've tried ottos 3 times and tigers twice. The super tigers lasted a couple days tops. I've tried caridina babaulti and those didn't last either. I have OEBTs that have been breeding happily for over a year in the next room, so it's not something in my tap water that's killing them.

So now the tank is just random red cherries, a lonely amano, and assassin snails that breed like crazy. I have 4 other tanks and for the life of me I can't figure out why this one is so cursed. I like the shape, I like the scape, but should I just tear it all down, wash it out and start over? What would you guys do?
 
#4 ·
Thanks guys... I didn't have time to do full testing last night but it turns out the tank of death has a pH of 8. Eek. That would certainly explain a lot... no super tigers or bettas for that tank, it'll just have to be fancy guppies or something.

My other home tank has a pH of 7.4 because there's a gigantic piece of driftwood in there. I never realized how much driftwood brings down pH. That would explain why I can keep tigers fine in there but not in the death tank.
 
#6 ·
Mix your tap water with RO water or distilled water to dilute the KH, then buffer the GH back up if necessary. I have very alkaline tap water like you, and this is the process I have to take for ALL of my breeding tanks. I have different ratios depending on what tank it is. No need to tear down the tank unless you want to use active substrate "which will only lower your PH for about a year before it wears off".

Also ottos are extremely delicate in their first two weeks in a new aquarium. Whenever I want to keep ottos, I normally purchase twice as many as I want to end up with because I expect half of them to die within the first week.

You may actually be able to get away with breeding cherries in your tap water, I was able to breed them in my 7.8 pH tap.
 
#7 ·
Ugh the tank of death has a TDS of 430 on top of everything. On the bright side I've kept a few ottos alive for a week now. My gh is around 13 and kh is 5 although my test kit is pretty old. What would live in those conditions? I want this to be a low maintenance tank, tap water only. Considering getting some guppies, they love hard water right?
 
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