The disaster: 25/oct/2009
It all started with a small "experiment" i did by disabaling the outer biological filter while relying on the sand, rocks and other decorations to do the work... I made test twice a day for Nitrite and Nitrate concentration and it seems to work well even though the Nitrite concentration was very close to its edge of limits.. But once i fed my fish more then the normal portion, suddenly the toxic concentration of the Nitrite increased and the Puffers became ill.
As the Puffers felt bad and 2 of them went dead have i noticed that adding salt acid liquid (HCL) and decreasing the PH made good to the fish and they started to go out of their hiding places and swem all around the aquerium volium. So, little by little i have finished the 1 liter HCL bottle that i had, while decreasing the PH from 8.7 down to nearly 4.0 and even less than that. very quickly it stabilized on 5 and then increased back up to 7 in a few hours (thats because the alcalinity of the rocks present inside the tank). lowering the PH was ok for these fish but it seemed that below the 4.5 level they suffered from breathing problems.
The fongus: a few of the fish started to develop a fongus that couses a
what called in slang: "cloudy eyes" (sorry but i havnt got a camera since it was not been delivered yet-so no personal made pics available) so i decided to add Formaline to the aquarium as it helped me before some months.
to catch the puffers inside aquarium full with plants and flora was not possible so according to
this article i needed to add 15-20 ppm to the whole tank.
my calculation went wrong and i added 20cc Formaline to the tank (needed for a period of 3 days) instead of 2cc. In the morning right after the night with the liquid 80 precent of my beautiful new born red fish where floating on their back, dead.
After 3 days the flora became brown and went up to the great heavens as well.
there where a few lucky fish that managed to survive, including 6 out of the 8 puffers (1 has just recovering from a severe cloudy eyes), the
anobia plants which is my favorite plant, and about 10 Sword Tails medium size but sexualy mature already.
These days: the fish established a more or less balanced life again,some of them are still in shock, i run the uzonizer device 24 x 7 even when i am at home, to clear the water and hopefully it will kill all the microbes living there in my room.
it came that my air condition is not working properlly, so anyway i open wide the door and with a fan help i pump all the uzone gas leftovers out to roof open air.
Meanwhile they made swarms of about 10-20 small orange sward tails 1 week old starting their life again, and i am happy, it was so bad but now.. now i am dancing alongside puffers again (-: