Crashed.

[Drumachine09]

Well, i moved my 55 into the basement today. I kept the filters wet (and running on the buckets with my fish in them). I filled it with dechlorinated water, let the temp stablize, and i added my fish. I went over to a friends house to see her brother who got back from iraq, and when i came back a little over an hour later, almost all of my fish were dead. My levels must have crashed. Both tiger barbs, 3 corys, and my female severum were both dead. I immediatly set up a quarentine tank to put bruce in. I checked my ammonia, and i was sitting at abou .50 ppm. I did a 10g water change, and the levels didnt go down any, even after a second 10 galllon water change .Bruce wasnt looking so good. I got in my truck, and hauled over to walmart. I got some stress coat, some disolving tablets to remove ammonia. Then i went and got some marineland white diamond (like ammo carb or ammo lock) from petsmart. Three corys that managed to elude my net are doing fine in the 55 now. Im going to do a giant water change tommorow, and check my levels.

Im kinda bummed about all this, but hopefully i wont have to re cycle the tank. If i do end up having to re cycle it, i think ill just get some biospira and call it good.

[ChurchofAdam]

did you somehow expose the filter to untreated tap water?

[jeffs99dime]

sorry to hear that:c11:

[Drumachine09]

did you somehow expose the filter to untreated tap water?

No. I put one 2 filters on two different buckets with my stock in them, and kept them running, and the other media, i put in a bucket of tankwater i took out.

[Lady Hobbs]

WHAT! OH NO. I am so, so sorry to hear about this Drum. You must be just sick.

I don't see how you could get enough ammonia in the tank in an hour to kill them. I am totally baffled as to what went wrong. Man, I have moved my 55 gallon about 3 times now. Always starting out with nearly all new water.

Did you get your water from another source than you usually use? I take it the temp of the water was what they were used to. ???????

What a sad day for you.

[Drumachine09]

I took it straight out of the tap, like usual. Dechlorinated each bucket with a capful of conditioner, and added it. I didnt pay attention to the temp, because i used some heaters to get it back up to where i want it.

Bruce is doiing ok, which is good. If there was one fish in that tank i wanted to save, it was him. Ive got him in a 10 gallon with a seeded filter, and ive been changing 50% of the water every hour or so.

[Lady Hobbs]

I don't get it. Had the bucket they were in been used for only fish? Like, no soaps, etc?

I don't even go thru all you went thru moving them. Mine go in a dry box with a airstone and tankwater. I get everything out of the tank, move it, throw everything back in, fill with dechlorinated water and in go the fish.

Something is mess up and I have a feeling it has to do with the filters and the fish in that bucket. Levels got toxic for some reason.

[Drumachine09]

Well, i did just get a new bucket from walmart yesterday, but that was the one i kept the severums in. I filled the tank with an old bucket that i always use. Should i test for anything else?

[Lady Hobbs]

I just don't know but this should not have happened. I wonder if the plastic in that new bucket was toxic. You did lose one of the severums, right. You had your fish in 2 different buckets right.....and lost fish from both?

[Drumachine09]

I have a 2 gallon square bucket, and that was home to the barbs and corys. It had a filter on it. Then i put the severums in the new bucket, also with a filter on it, and i lost the smaller female. Three of the corys are still alive, and one of the severums is still alive, so im thinking it had to do with the water out of the tap.

We dont use dthe basement bathtub very much. In fact, i dont think it has been turned on since january. Could that be a problem?

[Lady Hobbs]

I just don't know. I suppose the pipes could have had water laying in the lines that had toxins. Possibly flushing the lines might have prevented this but you may never know. I don't understand why you're showing ammonia now, too. Using the same gravel and filters should keep that from occuring with no set back at all.

Frankly, I'm baffled and just stabbing in the dark.

[Drumachine09]

Its funny. Bruces colors are better in his quarentine tank, than they ever were before. His stripes show now....hmmmm.

[Lady Hobbs]

Might be due to different lights and you can just see them better.

I just hope someone can come up with an explanation as to what could have happened. But standing water in those lines for 7 months might just be your culprit. Nothing else is making much sense.

You might want to use charcoal in the tank for a few days?

[Drumachine09]

Id have to wait untill tommorow to get carbon. Its just not worth going to walmart tonight. I cant stand the employees during the day. But at night, thats when all of the weird employees come out.

[Zerileous]

:tear: thats really rough man. It's just scary how something like that can happen. I really can't imagine how that happened but it must have been a contaminate introduced via the new bucket or the unused pipes. RIP all your fish who didn't make it :(

[RobbieG]

Man that is so horrible - I hope Bruce stays healthy!

I'd bet someone at the Walmart used the bucket to clean something with then just put it back on the shelf

[Rue]

Oh no! That's awful! I'm so sorry it didn't go well...I can't figure out what went wrong either...

[tropfish]

That doesn't make any sense! Sorry to hear about your losses

[zackish]

Dude that really sucks...that is kind of what happened to me while I was cycling my tank.
It finished cycling, I moved it, stirred up all the gravel from planting all of my plants and then I was back at 3.0 nitrites.
If anything it will just take a couple days to level out. That really sucks for all the fish deaths though. I am really sorry man, especially the severums. From your other posts it seemd like you had a really good pair too.

[genitor]

Sorry to hear about your lost. I think the standing water was the culprit.

[Drumachine09]

I'd bet someone at the Walmart used the bucket to clean something with then just put it back on the shelf

Well, there was a big stack of buckets, so i took the top one off of the stack, and looked inside. It looked like someone spilled half a bottle of ketchup on the inside, and let it solidify. So, i removed about 5 more buckets, and took one from the middle.



Lastnight, before i went to sleep, my water was actually pretty clear. Thismorning, i woke up, and it is very hazy. I didnt stir anything, so it must be a bacterial bloom. I need to go get about 20 feet of hose, and im going to siphon about 75+% of the water out into the window well.

Question about the ammo carb. It still shows up on ammonia tests, even though its non toxic. Does it not show up if i take the stuff out?


Bruce is still doing fine from what i can tell.

[RobbieG]

there are some products that actually remove the ammonia (I thought that the ammo carb/ammo chips were one of them) by absorbing it. The ones that remove it contain zeolite. If your chips have this in them they are soaking the ammonia up.

When you remove the water that contains nuetralized ammonia you remove the nuetralized ammonia - the drawback is that you don't know if you are removing nuetralized ammonia or ammonia - theres no way to tell whether or not you actually need to add any more of the nuetralizer.

[Willyleigh]

Well, i moved my 55 into the basement today. I kept the filters wet (and running on the buckets with my fish in them). I filled it with dechlorinated water, let the temp stablize, and i added my fish. I went over to a friends house to see her brother who got back from iraq, and when i came back a little over an hour later, almost all of my fish were dead. My levels must have crashed. Both tiger barbs, 3 corys, and my female severum were both dead. I immediatly set up a quarentine tank to put bruce in. I checked my ammonia, and i was sitting at abou .50 ppm. I did a 10g water change, and the levels didnt go down any, even after a second 10 galllon water change .Bruce wasnt looking so good. I got in my truck, and hauled over to walmart. I got some stress coat, some disolving tablets to remove ammonia. Then i went and got some marineland white diamond (like ammo carb or ammo lock) from petsmart. Three corys that managed to elude my net are doing fine in the 55 now. Im going to do a giant water change tommorow, and check my levels.

Im kinda bummed about all this, but hopefully i wont have to re cycle the tank. If i do end up having to re cycle it, i think ill just get some biospira and call it good.


Something else is afoot here, one hour is no were near long enough for that low level of ammonia to kill those fish which I'm am sure were up until then healthy happy and well fed.

My only suggestion is that somehow a poison got into the tank water.

[RobbieG]

Thats why I am suspicious of the bucket - water standing in pipes picks up metals like copper, lead, iron etc - which should take longer than that to kill also. I would only expect something like bleach or insecticide to be able to kill a tankfull of fish that quickly.

[tropfish]

i agree with robbie. the only way i could see this happening would be something like someone spilled a thing of bleach, the worker grabs a nearby bucket from the display to clean t up. rinces the bucket with water but doesn't wash it.

[Drumachine09]

Well, i think i might have found the culprite.

I "conditioned" the water with tetraqua easybalance. On the front, it says WATER CONDITIONER. But, after i did an 80ish% water change, i read the back of the bottle, and it says:

Note:Easy balance is not a tap water conitioner and will not neutralize harmful cholrines or chlorimines


So, i used stress coat to condition this batch.

The bacterial bloom gone, and the ammonia looks as if its BARELY over 0 ppm, i am going to try and add bruce tommorow, after i add the plants back to the tank.

[MeganL3985]

Oh no :( That sucks! Atleast you know what went wrong though. Unsolved mysteries are such a let down....

[Lady Hobbs]

What they call it a conditioner for!!!!! That's that conditioners are supposed to do I thought.......remove chorine and chemicals.

My neighbor has tropical fish and has never used a dechlorinator.

[RobbieG]

You may have to completely cycle the tank - its likely that the chlorinated water did a pretty good job on your bacteria too.

What a bunch of jerks

[Drumachine09]

You may have to completely cycle the tank - its likely that the chlorinated water did a pretty good job on your bacteria too.

What a bunch of jerks


Yeah, if i thought theyd do anything about it, id call them and give them a peice of my mind for being incompetent fools.

[Drumachine09]

Ok, so i lied. I did end up calling them. Basically i told them the bottle says water conditioner, and they were like, i pulled up a picture, and it says water treatment. I said "i can read, it says water conditoner", then she said "well, maybe you arent looking at easy balance". I figured she was an incompetent fool, so i hung up on her and got a guy the next time. He said hes never heard anything about it, but he belives me. Basically, i need to go to a petstore, and on their letter head, have them print out a list of all of the fish i lost, with prices. I need to send that, the empty bottle, and and description of the problem to the place on the bottle, and i will "be reimbursed as the see fit".

Normally i would say its not worth it, but ill do anything to stick it to these people.

[RobbieG]

Thats pretty cool - other than losing the fish to begin with!

[tropfish]

they diserve it after really killing your fish with misinformation

[Drumachine09]

Hmmmm, would it make me a bad person if i exagerated the quantities a bit?

[Kuli_Loach]

Lol, everyone does that sometimes. Sorry to hear of that also, and stick it to them man!!!

[Drumachine09]

Lol, everyone does that sometimes. Sorry to hear of that also, and stick it to them man!!!

Im going to tell them two severums, because bruce has ich AND finrot now, so i am trying, but im not sure if he will make it.

[Kuli_Loach]

Man, sorry to hear that. Aquarium salt can really help as well.

[Algenco]

Lol, everyone does that sometimes. Sorry to hear of that also, and stick it to them man!!!


What about compensation for grief and suffering:ezpi_wink1:

[Kuli_Loach]

True, really exaggerate on the details and stuff. Maybe a few tears would help and maybe they will give you more.:19:

[Drumachine09]

What about compensation for grief and suffering:ezpi_wink1:

Lmao. Im going to see if i can get an extra $10-$15 for grief and suffering. Good idea!

[Kuli_Loach]

Remember, TEARS work miracles, that is how I used to get stuff I wanted.:22: