# Help dying RCS



## wwh2694 (Aug 15, 2008)

my RCS is dying one by one everyday. they are all in 22g tank everything is going great until i started trimming all my stem plants. all my parameters are good. needed advice. right now i moved the rest of them in the 6g tank.


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## JAXON777 (Jan 4, 2007)

W/C a good amount of water from there tank. Check filter material and such and keep doing small w/c until they stop dying.


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## MacFan (Jul 30, 2006)

Are you injecting CO2? Fertilizer? If you get those set for a densely planted tank and then cut the plants back, there won't be enough plant mass to consume it at the previous rate and it could throw the water params off. Especially CO2, with the plants not consuming as much, it could drive the pH much lower than before.


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## wwh2694 (Aug 15, 2008)

Thanks for the quick responce. This is a co2 injected tank, but its been the same rate ever since I planted those stem plants. I have been doing 50% water change for 2 days now. It seems to slow down the dying rate, so far I lost 4 red ones. Do you all think its the plants that did it. Coz they have probably realised some chemical in the water when I cut them all down.


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## MacFan (Jul 30, 2006)

I can't imagine the plants being the cause. It's more likely that something changed in conjunction with the plant trimming. Were you changing more water than usual? Getting the water from a different source, treating it differently? While aquatic animals (and even plants) have a preferred range of water parameters, they can adapt to parameters beyond that. The sudden change of any of those could be stressful, even if it's a move from a bad parameter level to a good one. Significant change in hardness, pH or temperature could all be a cause. 

Also, your filter's bio load was based on a tank with a certain plant load. The filter handled some, the plants handled some. When you remove a lot of plants, the filter has to make up the difference and may not be able to absorb the extra waste all at once. So you could have gotten an ammonia spike. The filter will grow more bacteria to compensate and ultimately the problem may have passed. This problem can be made worse by cleaning the filter the same day you cut out a lot of plants as we commonly do. 

Another, less likely possibility is if you have a really deep or very compacted gravel bed that allowed anerobic bacteria to grow. Pulling up plants in that region would release hydrogen sulfide gas (smells like rotten eggs) which is acidic and can cause your pH to crash. I've not seen this happen personally in my tanks and I have deep gravel. But I've seen it happen if a filter is turned off for a few days and you start it up again. Not only has the beneficial bacteria died, but it's been replaced by anerobic bacteria which produce the sulfur byproduct and won't stick around once the water is flowing again. 

All you can really do is make sure the water you're using is comparable to that in the tank (hardness, pH), the chlorine remover you're using is not expired, the temperature difference with the tank isn't huge, etc. Service the filter OR trim plants on any given day, not both. Water changes are generally a good thing and more are better, but only if the water going in is not significantly different from what is already there. 

Probably not the case here, but I've also read that if you don't do water changes for a long time, the depletion of the minerals in the water (being consumed by the plants) and accumulation of waste will cause the pH to drop slowly over time to become very acidic. In acidic water, ammonia is "locked up" as ammonium which is less toxic to the fish. In this unique scenario, a water change can actually make things worse for a period because it will raise the pH and allow the Ammonium to convert back to Ammonia which is very toxic to fish. Never experienced this myself, but it's interesting. 

Michael


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## northtexasfossilguy (Mar 6, 2009)

That was some good info Michael, nice job.


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## wwh2694 (Aug 15, 2008)

Thanks for the all the info... RCS doing fine now... Next time i wouldnt cut all the plants out...


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