Originally Posted by
sw65galma
All the above posts are good, but a little confusing to new comers who are just bombarded with specific questions and "theroies" as to what happened..
Plain and simple
Basically if you think of the Bioload like wieght training....You can't goto the gym and start lifting 300lbs the first day...You have to work up to it...
What you did was started off training for the first month, which was good...ended at lifting 100lbs..
Next day layed down on the bench and had the trainer hand you 400lbs to bench which fell on you and crushed you...
That's essentially what you did to your tanks bioload by adding all that stuff at once..
You have to cycle your tank, "work it out" until it can handle the bioload by SLOWLY adding things one or 2 at a time (depending on size of tank and creature).
Where to go from here you ask?
Do 20% water changes weekly until the water is back to levels 0.
Things will probably die...but thats the way of the hobby (make bad mistakes and learn from them lol)
Wait a few weeks before adding anything else.
Then SLOWLY (and I think we need to start defining slowly) 1 Fish per Month or a few inverts per month...NOT BOTH.
This will insure your Bacteria is "trained" to handle the extra weight...
If you cannot wait this long then this is NOT the hobby for you..
A Decent sized tank to stock fully takes about 2 years
That is probably one of the best beginner lessons I have read in a while. I also believe that we often times think that we can just go ahead and do what you said was wrong and learn as we go, but doe to the nature of the hobby and the live creatures we are playing with it is wrong not to read read and read again because even after that we still make mistakes. Even the best in this forum make them but a lot less often with minimal loss and $$$ cost. and there is a chance that a smaller mistake can be corrected by this web. but you must read ask read again
Good luck to everyone but Read and ask
