Tank, H2O Water Quality

Please help?
Ive never owned these lovly little axcelotals before. Got 2 for a birthday pressent 2 days ago.
Need some help here... Set up the tank its aprox 60x30x35cm; added the substrate, filled with water, added filter, then: put thr right amount of 'Water ager - Chlorine neutraliser' plus 'Start Smart' - which cycles the aquarium - to eliminate ammonia & nitrate. Put some plants in. Then added my axcelotals: 1 female black wild; & 1 male (orange with red gils)? They seemed happy enough... Waited a while fed them a few pellets, didn't eat them... Fed them some blood worms, ate a few... Next day, woke to find out my boyfriend had also fed them. :-( ....
Well now the water in the tank has turned all murky...
I tried cleaning out all the dead food, and pellets, & decided to not feed them for a day or so... Yet after cleaning all the gravel (which Im going to replace with sand), its what they sold my boyfriend to put in the bottom of the tank, yet I found out after doing some research that you shouldn't use gravel. But the water is still really murky? You can barely see through to the other side of the tank. Yet they dont seem too overlly affected by the murky water. Yet I'd be so upset if I killed them...

What should I do? Please help.

Just remove all the gravel NOW and keep the bare bottom. You don't want them to even get a few pieces inside them.

As for the water...when you mix chemicals like that in a tank, it can mess the water up
I did read that correctly? You put 2 chemicals in the tank?

And did you remove the uneaten pellets right away? Or did you leave them in and then it got murky? That can also muck up your water.

the gravel is more of a concern than your water at the moment, as soon as you have taken that out, then start thinking about the water. the best thing to do is clean out all the uneaten food directly after feeding, leaving food or waste in the water cause Ammonia and nitrates as well as murky dirty water. as for bloodworm's they are very messy to feed axies, and as you can see, go everywhere lol pellets may take a few days for the axies to get used to eating, do you know what they were feed in the petshop? or by the breeder? as it sometimes takes a bit of persistence by the owner to train an axie to eat something new. earthworms are less messy and by my experiences are an axies favourite. :happy:

Thanks Guys.. X
I removed most of the gravel last night & left about 1cm on the bottom then put some flat black & white river stones on top. Ill remove the rest of the gravel now! As for the pellets, yes the water went murky after adding too many pellets! Thanks guys, Im a newbie at this, but Ive allready fallen in love with them. I wont kill them will I? Kind Regards Francesca

Im sure you wont, but the river stones are another concern, how big are they? as anything the same size as or smaller than an axies head can and will be swallowed. i suggest you get sand or a bare bottom tank.

this axie has swallowed 3 large rocks
http://www.caudata.org/forum/attach...lotl/13603d1294717212-axolotl-surgery-383.jpg

this link will be an interesting read if your thinking about keeping rocks

http://www.caudata.org/forum/f46-be...m/f58-sick-axolotl/73204-axolotl-surgery.html

:kiss: Thanks S. Removing all gravel now! Dont worry, the river stones are bigger than their heads; between 4-7cm in length & different heights. Thanks for your replies.... Just before I log out..

I shouldn't feed them for a day or so should I? The filter should do the rest & clean the water? F. Have a great day, thank you soooo much! xx
This site is fantastic...

you can feed them daily, or every second day or so, but seems how they are new you should try and get them to eat. and you may need to do 20% water changes to get rid of the murky water, maybe even a bit more, im not sure, murky water is a pain. good luck!

oh also one more thing, rocks are not just a safety problem, but the food and waste will get caught in-between them and makes the water foul and go mucky also ur axies might not be able to get there food between them too

Do some research on google about the nitrogen cycle, and how to cycle a fish tank. The most immediate problem is your water quality. Your water went murky because your tank is brand new, and uncycled. You need to be monitoring your ammonia level daily, and doing waterchanges to keep the ammonia below .5 ppm's. If your tank is indeed uncycled as I assume it is(it may be cycled, you need to check ammonia levels), then your axolotls will become very unhappy soon from sitting in ammonia, which is toxic to them.
Your conditioner will not instantly cycle your tank(or at least I seriously doubt it will), or in fact neutralize nitrate. If you don't have test kits go find a liquid drip ammonia/nitrite/nitrate test kit. Keep ammonia/nitrite as close to 0, and nitrate below 40 ppm's

This link will help you with anything you need to know about cycling
Caudata Culture Articles - Cycling

Thanks Carson.
After removing all the gravel, its tricky stuff to get out... Ill go to the aquarium & check out the test kits, great advice..
I can not say thank-you to you guys for your quick replies.
I am so blessed to have other people to discuss these issues with, once again, great site...
Have a great night/day?
Kind regards;
Francesca..

HappySkittles said:

Just remove all the gravel NOW and keep the bare bottom. You don't want them to even get a few pieces inside them.

As for the water...when you mix chemicals like that in a tank, it can mess the water up
I did read that correctly? You put 2 chemicals in the tank?

And did you remove the uneaten pellets right away? Or did you leave them in and then it got murky? That can also muck up your water.

Click to expand...

yes, Ive removed the gravel, but the pellets were left in the tank for a day or two, until I began trying to clean the tank last night.
Yes, we were instructed from the place we brought them from to put the water in the tank, add 'Aqua Master' - Water ager - Clorine neutraliser; 5mls per 20litres. Plus 'Start Smart' - Instantly Cycles Aquariums- "eliminates ammonia & nitrate in new tanks"; 125ml per 200 litres. Which was the whole bottle. Bottle size was 125mls.
I hope we were given the right instructions. Anyway Im going to invest today in a ammonia, nitrate & nitrite test kit. Hopefully this wil fix the problem, plus do a bit of a water change.
Thanks for the advice....
Kind Regards
Francesca

Typically the things that neutralize chlorine also neutralize ammonia and such. The two chemicals could have reacted. I have done something like this before when I had just fish and I picked one water treatment and used that. Never had murky water since

Yeah pellets left in for a few days is probably what did it. Always remove uneaten food as soon as possible.

And for you and your boyfriend feeding...maybe have something around the tank to mark if they were fed you don't want to over feed them. Maybe a "FED" sign or something...I bet you could make it look cute and be functional

Well thanks for all the help guys... Spent the last 48hours taking care of this problem.. Got myself a test kit.. Had an ammonia spike it seems, must of been from the mixing of chemicals or the pellets left in the water. Well just wanted to let you know the happy end to my problem.. I did remove all the gravel. Got a flat bottom with a quite a few large river stones. Got myself a testing kit, the water was way off. Did the necessary cleaning, and water change, fixed the water quality; and now its almost, almost normal..
My axey's stopped eating, while they endure the dirty water, but they had a good chow down on some 'organic' beef tonight. )
A happy end to my 'newbie' problem! Thanks all..... X x X

keep checking the water daily. It takes up to 6 or so weeks for the tank to cycle. You should be doing a waterchange whenever the ammonia is .5 ppm's or higher, and when the nitrite is 3 ppm's or higher. This way your axies won't get too stressed out.