Do I Need To Recycle?

navy · Feb 9, 2008

Hi there,

My partner had a HUGE ammonia spike due to uneaten food, and most the fish died and the surviving ones we donated to the LFS, so we have had the tank sitting there for about 2 weeks now still full of water, no fish, no filter running.

My question is would he need to recycle the tank from scratch again? Or could we just do a HUGE water change, clean the tank up a bit, and keep doing partial water changes until ammonia, nitrite etc reads 0 again? Or is it best just to clean everything completely and start from scratch again?

Any help would be much appreciated,

thanks

Duck and Dive · Feb 9, 2008

You should probably changr all of the water and replace the filter. How long have you had the tank?

navy · Feb 9, 2008

Hi, we have had the tank for about 2+ years. We had brackish fish in it, and we saw them grow from babies to large adults and were very sad to see them go, we can only guess it was because my bf tried some new food and left it over night and it caused the spike, they even survived when we moved house!

Do you mean change the media in the filter? We have a canister filter.

What about the gravel? should we totally clean that too?

We are also thinking of adding live plants this time round.

thx for the help!

raptorrex · Feb 9, 2008

navy said:
Hi there,

My partner had a HUGE ammonia spike due to uneaten food, and most the fish died and the surviving ones we donated to the LFS, so we have had the tank sitting there for about 2 weeks now still full of water, no fish, no filter running.

My question is would he need to recycle the tank from scratch again? Or could we just do a HUGE water change, clean the tank up a bit, and keep doing partial water changes until ammonia, nitrite etc reads 0 again? Or is it best just to clean everything completely and start from scratch again?

Any help would be much appreciated,

thanks

if the tank filter has not been on for two weeks, my guess is all the bacteria will be dead, or most anyway. and i am far from sure i would want to use the filter media again, unless it is sterilised, lol and that would deffo kill the bacteria. though i am sure someone will say they have done this with no problems, i would be inclined to start from scratch and do a fishless cycle.