any aquarists here? I need some help...

[Bolisnide]

Yes, thank you.
I'll try and answer all your questions (I'm on my phone so please excuse me)..
So I was previously doing water changes once per month, and changing out only about 30% of the water.
Usually my nitrates are at about 40 ppm.
The snails are tiny, they could have caused that much damage to my water chem in 2 days? Wow.
I did not quarantine :/
Tetras were about 4 years old, so yes oldish I suppose.
No green algae, looks like a white cloud in the tank..
Currently I have the bristle nose pleco, it's full grown albino, 4 inches long. And the 1 old zebra snail and the two new white snails purchased Friday.
I was told, the pleco isn't ideal for a 10 gallon, but he's survived several years now, and I don't know what to do with him otherwise- a bigger tank not an option due to space issues.
So it's not bacterial, it's a messed up nitrogen cycle?
I will do daily water changes, what else should I do?
And do you think there's any hope for adding any fish ever?
Thanks for you're help


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[Crispy42]

You can definitely add more fish eventually! Sorry, I didn't mean to make you think you could never have fish again! You just need to wait until your tank finishes this mini cycle and is a better environment for them. Here is an article that explains the nitrogen cycle if you aren't familiar: http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/bi...rogencycle.htm

Snails produce a shocking amount of waste for their size. In a small tank like yours, it certainly could have been the tipping point since the waste doesn't have 50 gallons of water to dilute it. Ideally I would recommend returning at least one of the snails if possible to reduce the bioload (aka amount of poop) in your tank. I'd also recommend, once your tank is done cycling, to start doing weekly 25% water changes instead of monthly. 40 ppm nitrates is a bit high. I would recommend testing your tap water directly out of the faucet to see if it already has that nitrate level present. If not, then it is probably a symptom of the infrequent water changes, so weekly partial water changes will help lower nitrate levels and the stress on your fish.