55g, community fish setup. Tank health questions.

[CptCrusty1]

My daughter's kindergarten class has a 55 standard with a large Bala Shark, and some goldfish, couple small tetra's, 1 blue gourami.

They asked me if I could help with the tank and I said sure. I did a 25% water change 3 months ago and told them they should do them periodicly. Other instructions were to clean the slime out of the HOB filters, not over feed, stuff like that.

3 months later, I go back and find out the only thing they've done to take care of the tank is clean the crud out of the HOB filters (just one of the two) and add water from evap.

All the fish were fine, there was Algae all over the glass from the light fixture (2nd one doesn't work). Nitrates and Nitrites were low, General Water Hardness was about the same as mine at home, really really hard...

Ammonia was low.

The only number I remember was PH between 6.5 and 7. I remember the other numbers not super elevated. SO... here's the question. How is this tank surviving with little to no maintenance being done. The fish in there are hardy fish, but they say I'm the only one that's done water changes... the tank has been there 5 years.

[troy tucker]

there is not a big bio loud on the tank. If they don't get over fed that keeps the bio loud even lower.

[CptCrusty1]

There are 10 fancy goldfish, 1 large Bala Shark, some Zebra Danios, a Blue Gourami, some mixed tetra's. Seems like the Bio load is "ok"

[KhmerStyle]

Same thing with my uncle only time his tank gets a water change is if I come over and do it his went 4 months without water change and fish were ok although his water was yellow only thing that killed his fish was cold water he had plecos and blood parrots only thing I could think of was the gravel was full off bacteria probaly kept it a little stable plus hardy fish. But it still doesn't mean to skimp on water changes poor fishes

[LooksLater]

That's crazy. Even if it doesn't kill them, it can't be good for them.

[mistahoo]

Re: 55g, community fish setup. Tank health questions.

Goldfish will thrive in green water. Can't say so much about the other two fish.

Sent from my spaceship using Tapatalk 2.

[eklikewhoa]

Its because the biofiltration is on par with the bio load and takes care of business.
Nitrates should be the only thing that elevates but since there's no added load it slowly creeps up and the fish acclimate.

Long term it could do harm but other than that there's no ill effect.

Now if you were to try and drastically change that then there will be problems.

Also the algae consumes a lot of the nutrients so that helps greatly.

[allysangels]

just curious.. you mentioned that ammonia and nitrite were "low"? they should be 0.00000 in an established tank.. i agree with ek that the algae is probably scrubbing the water.. but this is just a time bomb.

[LooksLater]

Agreed about it being a time bomb. I was thinking about this the other day, and it occurred to me that tanks like this get by more due to the resilience of the fish than any true balance. More sensitive fish would never have made it that long, but...it's much like humans- it's amazing what filth a human is capable of living in (children living in trashpiles, no clean water or sewers, etc) and still surviving. It will shorten life span, for sure. Drop quality of life pretty low. Might trigger a disease that they may or may not have contracted otherwise (like hole in the head or tumors in the fish), but they'll keep on chugging along until something comes along to stop them. Life's like that. Sad, but true- they'll suffer through until that time bomb goes off.
Wow that was pretty depressing. You all have an urge to water change and donate to a children's fund? I do now. Hahhah.

[allysangels]

the thing i noticed while running the aquatics dept at petco for 2 years, most people do not do water changes, like ever. a large majority just let months go by, until the they start having problems, then just break it all down and start over. i used to do free seminars on the weekends to try and educate the masses about not only the different types of set-ups and fishy compatibility, but also on doing routine maintenance properly and the utter importance of doing so. a common complaint was that a customer would come in saying "all my fish just died!!!" i would ask them to run me through their normal routine, and ANY changes over the past several weeks, such as new stock or foods, decor changes, stuff like that. without fail (and i've heard this from at least a couple dozen people) they tell me "nothing changed, i just cleaned the tank!" then i would ask how they cleaned it, what did they do? and they would answer that they took the fish out, drained the water, washed the gravel and decor, and cleaned or even just replaced the entire filter because they thought they needed to. this breaks my heart.. people spending money they don't need to spend, doing work they don't need to do, and killing their babies by doing it! the other common problem, which i think may be more relevant here in this case (yes i am long-winded today but this subject is very important to me), is people that would come in to return a recent purchase of fish that had died at home in their tank. petco has many issues with their livestock, true, but i must give credit where it is due, for freshwater fish, they have the absolute best return policy around. 30 days. of course this was up to my discretion, and i would always insist that a separate water sample be brought in before they could have replacement fish. 9 times out of 10, it was a new tank that hadn't finished cycling properly, and ammonia or nitrites would be elevated to lethal levels, in which case i would tell them to be patient. but also i saw plenty of cases where the tank had been up and running for a long time, and it was the nitrates that were high.. the customer would argue that "all my other fish are fine, it's just the new one that died." the problem here is that fish can, like lookslater mentioned, just like people, adapt to almost any conditions. and in this case, they had adapted to the high nitrate levels. but then you take a new fish and add it to this poor water, they are not used to it! it is a shock to their system, and it will stress and most likely kill them. in this case, i would ask my customer to go home, do 30-50% water changes daily for a few days, then come back with a new sample before i would give them new fish. the point here is that a tank that looks clean can be, in fact, a cesspool.. and one that looks "dirty" can be a very healthy environment indeed. it's all about the water. maybe i miss my job just a little?