Help! Cleaning The Aquarium I Have Taken Over!

[foamo1]

Sorry! im really new... jus been given my sisters fishtank which is quite dirty

its a Jewel 60L ... got a few mollies, redtail shark, cory, 2 clown loach n couple others


The water's full of matter and dirt floating about... n theres really deep grime under the gravel!

i've tried cleaning a couple times by siphon cleaning the gravel til half the waters gone then refilling with clean... but theres so much muck... cleaning it jus brings all the muck up from the bottom and it ends up all floating about

also... how do i clean the pump/filter area? how does it all work?

the pump was jammed.. so i cleaned it out.. then it just squirts grimey water into the tank..

so i thought the filter must need cleaning... so i took the filter sponges out n gave them a good thorough rinse under the tap (was this a mistake???)
the pump still pumps out dirty water into the tank.. and just fills the water with dirt that floats about


sorry for confusing post! but advice would be really apprieciated!!

 

[SJ2K]

Well, firstly id like to say and well done for coming here for answers.

Im afraid you've made a few mistakes which may well end badly for your fish, before doing anything else I would seriously recommend rehoming your fish, most fish stores will take them in.

Once your fish are out (asap), then you'll be able to completly break down and clean the tank propperly, re-cycle it (as now you've washed your filter under tap water, you need to start again really) and go from there.

 

[foamo1]

thanks for the quick reply... what do these filter sponges actually do then?? and why is it so bad to clean them under a tap?

i thought they were just there to filter out any debris before the water reaches the pump

sorry, really dont have a clue how it all works!

 

[SJ2K]

Its ok, it can be quite alot to take in at once Yes, the filter does help remove some of the physical waste, more importantly though it removes chemical waste from the water, it does this by having bacteria develop within the sponges which consume the chemical waste and turn it into less harmfull substances. By washing it in tap water (which we know is full of chlorine) you kill said bacteria thus eliminate the filters ability to remove toxic chemical waste.

 

[ox5477]

yes. if you read some of the stickies at the top of this sub-forum, there is a good amount of info on cycling: how and why we do it.

Even if the filter was still good, I would recommened to rehome most of those fish as many get too large and aggressive for that sized tank. The RTBS (Red-Tailed Black Shark) can be very aggressive towards all other stocking and can grow to 6" so a good sized tank is recommened for them. The clown loaches can grow to a large size as well, easily reaching 10-12", and because they like to be in shoals of 4-6 members, then your looking at atleast a 100G to 125G tank for them (US Gallons by the way).

So... as said, try to take all of these fish to your local fish shop (lfs) and start anew following steps that are spelled out in the stickies I mentioned earlier. I'm sure Miss Wiggle will be along too and she has many of the most important links posted in her signature.

Ox

 

[Miss Wiggle]

I think we need to take a step back at this point, for you to understand our advice you need to first understand some of the mechanics of fishkeeping and how it all works.

The first thing to understand is the nitrogen cycle, it’s basically how a filter keeps the water clean, the link in my sig ‘whats cycling’ will explain this to you.

When you’ve got that under your belt you’ll understand what bacteria we are talking about and why it’s bad to kill it off!!

Now I wouldn’t panic about having killed all the bacteria off, a mature bacteria colony is fairly resilient and will grow back in no time at all, basically as long as you haven’t killed it all off completely then all you’ll experience is a mini cycle which is basically a small version of the process described in the link above.

The best way for us to tell what’s going on with the tank and to advise you is with test results, did your sister give you a test kit? If so can you let us know your water stats?

If you can’t then over the next few days I’d recommend several large water changes doing as much gravel vacc’ing as possible in this time.

If you want to do a major vac to get it all out at once then catch the fish and put them in a bucket of tank water, vac out the whole tank until all the water is removed, then top it back up again making sure you use dechlorinator and start vaccing all over again, you can just keep doing this until the substrate is completely clean then re-fill the tank, wait for it to heat up to the right temp and then add fish back into it.

 

[foamo1]

thanks loads for the advice!!

hopefully i havent removed ALL the good bacteria...
its an old tank so prob got alot of all kinds of stufff in it..

will by a test kit first before anything else, prob best thing, just to see whats gwarning..

is the pump also important for getting oxygen into the tank?

thanks for the advice everyone

 

[Miss Wiggle]

as you quite rightly identified a good quality test kit should be your first purchase.

In the mean time it's best to assume the worst, so if you assume that the tank is cycling and has high ammonia and nitrite then you should be doing 50% water changes every day (minimum). If it turns out that this isn't the case then you won't have done any harm by doing the changes, if you were to assume the other way round that it's fine and it then turns out that it isn't you could have done permanent damage to the fish. So best to assume the worst and possibly get a pleasant surprise when you get the test kit.

The filter should oxygenate the water, just make sure that there are ripples across the water's surface and it'll be fine.