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Hello. I am sorry for havent posted in such a long time, and under very grim circumstances. I have just arrived back home in Indiana, after working in Orlando for 8 months. My roommate, who was in charge of the apartment and pets, was supposed to care for my tanks. He fed them, aparently.... the tanks are green! GREEN! Of my 7, 4 remain and 2 have (amazingly and sadly) surviving fish... I'm not sure the best way to try and get rid of the horrid smells, clean the tank (I know I have to remove the fish), and set things on the right track. I am so disappointed to see my beatiful tanks and lovely fish suffer like this!

46gal tank- I see 4 Mbuna left in it, all are 6". I'm not sure if my Pleco is in there or not, I can't see through alot of the algea and The bottom is compleatly covered in food/poo/algea (about 1" deep), making it difficult to see, but I have been searching and I desperatly hope I find him!!!

15gal tank- Guppies. There are so many In there I cant count, as they have been multiplying while I was away. Most of the water has been evaperated from the tank, so its only filled about 3 - 4" with green water. The bottom is simular to the 46gal tank.

10gal tank- Empty? But still overfed. There are about 3" of food on the bottom, all the plastic decor ect, as well as any remaining things from the fish that lived there within the past 8 months, including the fish... (and I am sad to report ... I can hardly type this, that Klaus, my betta, once lived in that tank)

1gal- See 10gal.

I have a few empty 1gals that were taken down while I was away, and hopefully I can use them? Please, Please help me. How do I go about fixing this???

Oh, And before it is mentioned, I would like to state that I left detailed instructions, phone numbers, and a list of websites that could help with the fish if there were any problums. I also SHOWED MY ROOMMATE EXACTLY WHAT TO DO to keep up with basic maintnance. I am very, very, very, very upset by this, because I take my fishkeeping very seriously. I feel very sorry that I left my fish in his hands, and I also want to request that anyone reading/posting please, please be sympathetic and do not flame me.

-inky

Inky

Wow... I think really the only thing that can be done to these tanks is to put the remaining fish in some containers, and clean the tanks out as best as you can. As in hauling them outside and hosing them out.

The horrid smells are probably from anaerobic bacteria, which produce substances toxic to fish. A this point, don't even worry about saving any of the "good" bacteria - in fact I doubt there are any left. Right now you should just concentrate on getting the fish into a clean environment, even if it means they will have to cycle the tanks again.

Just get all the crap (literally) out of those tanks now and get the fish in some clean water, and then you can start from there. We can assist you in "rebuilding" the tanks after.

---

I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Inkling,

Move slowly! I know it is upsetting to see your fish like that, but remember that fish do not like sudden changes in water chemistry.

They have adapted to that messy water, and all the bad chemicals in it has probably weakened their immune systems. I have read of situations like this were moving the fish into clean water killed them simply due to the sudden change of water.

This has never happened to me so hopefully the more experienced folks here can correct me, but if I were in your shoes this is what I would do.

For the tanks with fish in them still, I would do 15%-20% water changes each day. Make sure to vac the gunk off the bottom. The goal is to slowly improve the water so that the fish can handle it. Also make sure to clean the filter so that it can start filtering the gunk out of the water and build up good bacteria colonies again.

For the tanks with no fish I'd just tear them down, clean them and start over.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Rick
See all my pictures at Google Web Albums

The only problum with relocating the fish is the biggest area that I can relocate the fish to is a 1gal... for a 6" fish that might be bad.... I will do a thourough cleaning of the 10g ASAP and try and move the guppies in there. I have sandwhich bags, and I may be able to find some Jars about the house for them, but there are so many It's the big fish that worry me. Would all of the Mbuna fit peacefully in a 10g temperarily if I thouroly clean it?

-inky

Inky

Inkling- I'm really sorry to hear about your tanks. Maybe you can get a big rubbermaid bin or something like that to put the fish in while you are cleaning out the tanks. You should be able to put a HOB filter on one of those containers and it would be okay for a week or two. Just be sure to clean it really well first.

I would take slickrb's advice and slowly dilute the nasty green sludge water with good water before you transfer the fish out. Less of a shock, but hey, after this they should be able to handle anything.

Good Luck

- Meow -

If you have nowhere else to put them(storage containers work) you'll have to shuffle them around. I would clean the 10g, drain the remaining water and guppies from the 15g into it, and add a few gallons of clean water. Add a few more gallons later that day and so on until the tank is filled up. Then start doing 25% water changes daily until the water is changed out and the guppies are in a clean tank with clean water. In the meantime clean the 15g, drain enough water from the 46 to fill the 15 and move the mbuna to it temporarily. Save as much water as possible. Clean the 46g and move the fish back in. Make sure not to add too much new water at once when refilling the tank. No more than 25% new water at a time. Do water daily water changes until water parameters are back to normal. After you get the tanks fixed up you'll have to watch the new cycles and do water changes as needed to keep the fish healthy until the tanks are stable again. A bottle of Prime would help the fish if you can get it.

Nooo - you must do this very, very slowly. Don't take the fish out of the tanks yet!

I guess you've got about 5g of water in the 15g. Pop 2.5 g in then anotehr 2.5g in 3 days. Continue until tank is full, then switch to 10% water changes every 3 days.

the 46g, do a 10% water change initially and gently vac the worst of the mank from one quarter. Don't dig down into the gravel, you don't want to release additional anaerobes into the water. Keep doing 10% water changes every 2 days and gravel vac every 4 days. As the water improves, gently begin getting deeper into the gravel. The emphasis is on gently - you don't want this stuff stirring up into the tank if you can avoid it! Always vac before water changing.

Repalce all filter media, however. Consider replacing the filters entirely, they are probably knackered anyway. Lower the temp slightly and add as many air bubblers as you can. Take off any anti-syphon valves and reconfigure the pumps so they can work safely without A/S valves - you need as much airflow as possible.

Get test results done on the water, this will give you a good baseline to start from. Avoid just cleaning everything and starting a new cycle, this may compound damage to the fish.

If you believe the 10g is empty, just break it down.

It is absolutely vital that you do this clean up as slowly and gently as possible. Think about a person moving from a smoggy, polluted city to the countryside - they often get ill because of the removal of pollutants. It's the same for fish!

You're just going to have to put up with the smell.

This situation is salvageable - I have salvaged a similar situation myself. But it must be done slowly and calmly - don't panic and rush into things!








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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

Alrighty... I have started by breaking down the 1gal tank, hopefully to open up some storage possibilities, if not, then to get rid of the horrid smell. (All the tanks are in my *new* bedroom which now reeks of dead fish and is quite unpleasent) It took a great emotional toll on me and I had to take a short break, but I will start on the 10gal tonight and hopefully have it clean enough for the guppies to move into (temp) with thier current water (about 5g... but I can only put 4g in the water closest to the bottom is so thick with algea that I dont think that I shold risk it) and do water changes of about 15% every other day, and try and treat the water for disease, and algea as I cycle the other tank.

I will pick up a rubbermaid asap, but don't think I have the financal means to replace any filteration just yet. I have a small mechanical filter that I use in the 10g and the 15g, but I can see if I have an extra one.

Thank you for all the great advice and I will let you know as soon as my conditions improve ^_^

-inky

Inky

Definitely keep the fish in the old water and change it slowly but if you don't clean out the gravel you'll get nowhere. Doing gravel vacs in tanks like that is marginally useful and will require draining what water is left before they are ready for new water. Your better off just stripping the gravel out and rinsing it because it will take months otherwise to get it clean. In the meantime the junk in there will just keep compounding the issue and even when you get the fish used to water changes you may not be able to change enough water to keep up with the breakdown of ammonia. I think it's better to risk putting them through a cycle than spending months trying to get that gravel clean through normal maintenance. I'd definitely move the fish with their old water(algae filled water won't hurt them) and completely rinse the gravel. Just don't feed them heavy and keep up on daily water changes until everything is cycled again and the ammonia and nitrites shouldn't be a problem. The fish will be in cleaner water faster and with less stress than trying to leave the fish in the tanks and clean the gravel slowly.

After taking the fish out, I noticed that the 15g (the one they were in) will be easier to repair/cycle then my 10g, which has like mold, among other bactirias, on it from the uneaten flakes and general mess. I cleaned the tank thouraly and put 3gal of water in it, and am leaving the mechanical filter in a bucket with hot water after scrubbing it, in hopes to get it clean. As for the guppies, there were about 50 in that tank, including the fry and I don't think that they will all survive, even for the night. I temeperarily have placed them all in 1gal tanks and divided them up (most of them are not full grown) and Hopefully they will be okay for a few days while there old tank is being cleaned. Once the 10g is cycled and the bacteria and icky stuff is gone, I will seperate the males and females, as I would like to keep them all, as they seem to have developed an interesting strain of color. (I will probubly give alot away though

The old water that I put them in, I tried to swoop up befor the tank got too shooken up, once it was stirred, the water turned black. I am really worried about keeping them in thier old water...

Inky

Your room mate should hope you dont do anything to them. Because that can be considered crulety to animals, and I have read in papers that they can get in some trouble for that

But good luck with recovering from that problem

Fish tanks are an expensive addiction

Technicnally I"m sure it is an animal cruelety offense, but they have a hard enough time prosecuting dog, cat and horse cases. I doubt they would even look seriously at a fish incident. I'd think about some new roomates though. He sure doesn't seem very responsible. If he didn't want to take care of the fish, he should have just said so. Then she could have found someone else. I hope he pays his rent and stuff on time.

Inkling, do your filters still work or did they burn up from lack of water?

Unfortunately, and there are people that may not agree with me on this, you are probably going to have to clean everything from every tank with a bleach solution. (one at a time of course) Plastic absorbs smells, and once mold has started in the seals it will be very hard to stop even with a thorough cleaning. Bleach will kill any nasties and kill the smell. You just have to be careful and rinse with dechlorinator over and over until you think it is fully rinsed and then rinse it again. Letting items sit in the sun to dry will also break down any bleach that remains. I have bleached tanks, gravel etc. and not had any problems with fish afterwards.



- Meow -

If you do decide to bleach any empty tanks, which should be fine provided there are no fish in it (fairly obviously..) then be VERY careful and DO NOT MIX DECHLORINATOR WITH BLEACH. Wash out the bleach from the empty tanks with tap water at least 4 or 5 times before any dechlorinator goes in.
I'm very sorry to hear about what happened to your fish, I would probably go mental at anyone that allowed my tanks to get into that state.
I'd agree that anything you do must be done slowly, as stated previously any sudden changes in water chemistry may just finish off your fish.
Do you know anyone who keeps fish? it might be worth trying to err... 'borrow' some of their tank's gravel or decoration or something which would help decrease the ammonia/nitrite spike that will inevitably result during a recycle. Perhaps even Ammolock, if you can find it in your LFS could be used.
Perhaps moving the guppies into the 10 gallon and other containers whilst cleaning the 15 gallon, and then putting the cichlids into the 15 gallon whilst their home gets cleaned?
Whatever you decide to do, good luck and keep us informed on how it goes.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. You should never mix bleach and dechlorinator. Actually, you shouldn't mix bleach with anything but water. What I meant was to scrub everything down with a diluted solution of bleach and hot water, rinse well with the hose and then start rinsing with dechlorinated water.

The "borrowing" of a small amount of gravel is actually not a bad idea if you know that the tank it came from is well maintained and free of disease. A knee-hi stocking toe or mesh baggie with some colonized gravel combined with a bacterial starter like Cycle will help lessen the recycle of the tanks and stress the fish less.

As far as the yuckky old water goes, its kind of scary that it turned black when stirred up, but not really shocking. It will probably be fine. As long as you are doing daily or every other day small water changes, it will take less time than you think to dilute that nasty old water.

Hang in there. It will be okay in the end.

- Meow -

-monkeyboy- Unfortunatly, in the state of Indiana, cruelty to a fish isn't the same as animal cruelty. (And I DISAGREE with this statement) According to Indiana state law, an animal protected under the animal cruelty laws has to have a vertebre, and I believe be land-dwelling.(not entirely sure) I Could, if I wanted to press charges for the damage done to the tanks, as well as the emotional stress it is putting on me, I am just choosing not to and it is a personal decision.

~~~

-sunspotkat-

Thanks for the tip on bleaching the tank. I think I have some extra bleach I use for regular cleaning... but how deluted should the water/bleach mixture I use to clean be? I don't want to use so much that I can't get it out. Also, would I be able to use this on the decor and such to try and salvage some of it?

~~~

-caled-

Unfortunatly, not many people around me keep fish. But there is a fairly good petstore down the way and I should be able to pick up some Ammolock and other supplies when I go to replace some of the filters. Thanks for the tip!

Inky

Inkling,
You can use the bleach solution on everything, tanks, gravel, ornaments, filters etc. You just have to be super careful that you rinse everything REALLY well. You will need all new fliter media obviously. To start with follow the directions on the bleach bottle for general cleaning. I think its one capful for every 5 gallons or something like that. Its better to start with the weaker dilution and step it up if things don't come as clean as you would like the first time around. It is always easier to add more than to try to take away too much. To do the gravel, soak it in the bleach solution for at least a day. Use some kind of utensil to stir it around every once in a while. To rinse, I would lay it out on some plastic sheeting or put in a strainer and blast it with the hose. After that you can soak it in clean dechlorinated water before putting it back in the tank for use. You might have to do it a couple times. As for the dechlorinator, I usually double the amount added per gallon of water that the directions specify for dechlorinating water for fish use. Better safe than sorry I think. If you need to do scrubbing on the decor or filters, I have found that a new toothbrush and an algae scrubbing pad just for fish tanks works well and they are both pretty inexpensive. For somethings like buckets, strainers etc. that are going to be for fish use only, the dollar store is your friend.

I wish I could help you, but I don't live in Indiana anymore. Ironicly, I live in Florida now.


- Meow -

Thanks a bunch!
The 15g actually cleaned up easier then I thought it would but the 10g still looks kind of scary... I'll put some more effort in it in a bit, right now its soaking and then I'll try the bleach ^^


Inky

Since it's only a 10g you could just leave it sit with either a mix of 25% bleach and water or 50/50 vinegar and water. Both would kill any mold, bacteria, and help dissolve any algae. Vinegar will also help dissolve hard water lines if it has any. Toss on some equipment that also needs cleaned to move the water around and leave it sit overnight. It will clean up much easier the next day with less scrubbing and stains left behind.

the bleach worked great! I used it on the 10g and the 15g. I'm letting the 10g soak a little longer since it was in worse condition, but its starting to look better already. I also tried it on my one gallon that got messed up, and it worked wonders (especially since the gravel in the tank was white) I washed it several times and am letting it soak in non-bleached water now (I cant smell any traces of bleach in the water and my testers indicate the water levels are normal), and I will start my cycles tonight, unless I forgot something. Thanks again!

-inky

Inky

Good deal!!

I'm glad that things are working out well given the circumstances. You will be up and running again in no time.

Kat

- Meow -