55 Gallon Help, FW... maint. 9/28/11
I have a 55 gal. tank with 2 Giant Danios, 3 Bala Sharks, 2 Plecostomus and 1 Senegal Bichir. I am currently feeding them with flakes, sinking algae pellets and shrimp pellets. I use a sand substrate with 6 fake plants and 3 large lava rocks. I use 2 Aqueon 30 gal filters and keep my water temp around 82 degrees F.
<Insanely warm. For this mix of things, the default 25 C/77 F is ample, and perhaps even a degree cooler in winter.>
I do a 20 percent water change once a week and a 50 percent change once a month, and I have a few questions.
<Fire away.>
1) Is this set-up ok for the fish that I have?
<For now, yes, but the Bala Sharks will get MUCH too large for this tank within a year or so, and the Plecostomus will turn a 55-gallon tank into a swamp, and wouldn't be my recommendation for this system. A plain vanilla Ancistrus (Bristlenose Cat) makes infinitely more sense. Ancistrus are better algae eaters as well as smaller and less messy.>
2) My Bichir seems healthy but I wondering if feeder fish or some other type of food would be better than shrimp pellets?
<Never, ever use feeder fish. They're the single best way to introduce parasites into your aquarium. Bichirs do best on a varied diet based around Thiaminase-free foods such as earthworms, tilapia fillet, Pollack fillet, and cockles. Occasionally, you can use foods that contain Thiaminase, such as mussels, prawns and shrimps, but these must be no more than 25% of their diet.>
3) What fish would be a good addition? Because my tank seems rather empty.
<It will soon be overstocked, so cool your rockets.>
4) What is the best way to clean my sand?
<You shouldn't need to. Given the sand need only be 1 cm/0.5 inches deep, the catfish will sift out any uneaten food without problems. So if you find detritus sitting on top of the sand, then that's a sign your filtration isn't sufficiently strong. For a mix of species like this, anything less than 8 times the volume of the tank in turnover per hour would be inadequate; in other words, for your 55 gallon tank, your filter needs to be rated at not less than 440 gallons/hour.>
5) How often should I change my sand?
<Never.>
Thanks,
Dana
<Glad to help, Neale.>

White fuzzy film/fungus (?) in newly cycled puffer tank 9/12/11
Hi Crew,
I love your site and can usually find the answers I need but am struggling and concerned by this one. I recently upgraded to a bigger tank and passed on my 65L tank to my boyfriend, who bought a new silent filter for it as we want to keep it in our bedroom. We have been cycling the tank and maturing the new filter using squeezing from my old filter sponges (I still need the old filter in my new tank while my new filter establishes), fish food flakes and a load of gunk washed from the old gravel substrate (he has created an aquascape using sand so didn't want to take the gravel). We also added Nutrafin Cycle bacteria and after that Interpet Filter Start. There are lots of plants in there and also some tadpole snails for a few days before we were sure the tank was cycled (0 ammonia, 0 nitrite and, after water change a trace of nitrate).
A couple of days before we added the puffers (and the snails, nothing living in there at this point apart from plants) I suddenly noticed an alarming amount of what appears to be mould on a large piece of drift wood - this mould is very fluffy, rising probably about half a centimetre from the wood, and also some white mould completely covering the sucker pads that are holding the heater in place. The white mould on the sucker pads was actually wafting around on the surface of the pads in the water current.
We then introduced the tadpole snails...... they seemed unfazed.... possibly even enjoyed the mould and were frequently observed passing through it and apparently eating it.
With the tank being cycled my boyfriend was keen to get his dwarf puffers so he used a syphon to remove all visible trace of the mould from the wood and suction pads, and as much of the partially decomposed fish food as he could, collected the puffers and introduced them yesterday.
However, today I notice that the white mould has regrown on the suction pads and on the wood! The dwarf puffers seem to love the wood and 'peck' it quite a lot...... It even appears that they might be eating the mould?!
My question is, there being so much mould in the tank, are the puffers in danger? Could they become infected by it? If so what can we do to get rid of it without harming the puffers? Suctioning only seemed to solve the problem for 2 days!
Thank you for any suggestions you can make.
Jo
<White fungus develops on wood that hasn't been cured. It can also grow on uneaten food and fish faeces. If you see fungus in the tank, it's almost certain your tank is "dirty" in the sense that the filter isn't adequate for the size/numbers of fish being kept, and that you aren't keeping it clean. Review filtration, scale back feeding, remove uneaten food and any organic matter, stir the gravel weekly and siphon out detritus, and generally improve the cleanliness of the aquarium. Do contrast fungus (which is white and fluffy) with bacterial threads (which are usually grey and distinctly slimy and smelly when removed from the water). Also recognise blue-green algae that, despite their name, can be all sorts of colours. Bacterial threads grow for the same reason as fungi, but are even more worrying in terms of cleanliness. Blue-green algae favour tanks with poor or too much lighting, minimal water movement, and high nitrate and phosphate levels. Cheers, Neale.>
Re: White fuzzy film/fungus (?) in newly cycled puffer tank 9/13/11
Thanks Neale,
<Most welcome.>
The fungus appeared before we had introduced the fish - only 3 baby dwarf puffers in a 65L tank which has a Fluval U2 filter. As far as my research reveals we are understocked and have more than adequate filtration.
<Okay.>
I guess it makes sense then that the method of fishless cycling we used (fish food and fish poo from my tank) resulted in growth of fungus while the filter was maturing. The readings for water cleanliness are good (no ammonia, no nitrates and lowest reading of nitrate).
<Cool.>
But what about the fungus? Will it harm the fish?
<No.>
Why won't it go away???
<It will, once all organic matter is consumed. Usually fungus grows on uncured wood. Throw out such wood, or at least cure elsewhere, like in a bucket in the garden.>
Is there still some rotting waste in there?
<If fungus, the threads only grow through organic matter. Think of mould on old bread. Fungus won't grow on inorganic matter unless there's something there for them to eat. Now, blue-green algae will grow anywhere there is sluggish water flow and adequate light. So do think about that.>
And if so, why is the fungus growing on the suction pads????? And not on the actual waste????
I'm worried I will come home to find them infected with the same fungus as they are new to the tank so presumably slightly weakened....
Jo
<Cheers, Neale.>