I'm not worried about the chemistry of the water, I think I have that under control for now...I am concerned about disease from the feeder fish contaminating my tank!!!!
WOO HOO for the pH coming up but that may be in part due to the levels of ammonia as well as cycling
You can see disease in fish.
White spot is most common....
Do they have any small white spots and are they scratching themselves on the sand and plants if not then no white spot.
Worms and parasites...
Can you see anything on them that shouldn't be? White threads coming out of the cloacas, lumps and bumps, do their gills look normal, are they scratching? No then likely no parasites/worms but you can always slice open the belly of a dead one and have a look
Fungus...
Looks like cotton wool you can't miss it
other odd behaviours that could indicate problems...
Trouble swimming and maintaining buoyancy, swimming in circles, gulping air or swimming along the surface with their noses out (they do this in poor water where usually the ammonia is too high).
Essentially if you fish are behaving normally and don't have anything growing on them or coming out of them then the chances of disease are very low.
Here is what I think is killing them
You said that you had 1ppm ammonia so far but no Nitrares/nitrites so I would suggest that the bacteria required for transform the ammonia into the N's are not yet present, or present in quantities high enough to produce enough for the test kit to pick up which means you still have a lot of cycling to do
and 9 goldfish is just too many for the tank to handle.
You might want to lok at doing an extra water change in there as if the ammonia get's too high it can kill the emerging bacterial colonies sending you back to square one
You are looking for an ammonia spike to show you that you're close but you don't want that spike to kill your filter.
Your right it does take longer with more water but it will ultimately be more stable for exactly that reason
Out of curiosity have you tested your water out of the tap/well there may be something in there that shouldn't be, given it's well water I doubt it but still worth a look though :happy:
oooh and maybe test before and after you change the water next to give you an idea of the effect it's having on the water quality. Just a thought
Hang in there another couple of weeks and it should be perfect
To be honest we don't bother with all the early testing here. We throw in a few guppies, some plants/substrate/filter medium from an established tank if we have any then watch the fish for signs of stress changing the water if they do and wait for the water to go cloudy (ammonia spike) do a 50ish% water change then watch if closely for the next week and change the water as required. Once the cloudyness settles and clears we test the water for 3 days to see what's going on and then you're good to go. Hubby has been doing this for a very long time though.
