How To Clean A Tank After Ich Kills All Your Fish

[giants1249er]

How do you clean a 10-gallon tank after ich killed off both my goldfishes? Do I need to get rid of the old filter and get a new one to avoid contaminating the tank when i introduce new fish? LMK. Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[Sam-Baker]

How do you clean a 10-gallon tank after ich killed off both my goldfishes? Do I need to get rid of the old filter and get a new one to avoid contaminating the tank when i introduce new fish? LMK. Thanks in advance for your advice.

I cleaned out a friends tank after his fish died from ich and due to the ich cases stuck to the glass and ornaments of the tank, to finally kill them off we washed the tank out with a small splash of boiling water and poured water on the casings which had stuck to the glass. Then we filled it up with luke warm water and turned the heater up to as just under the highest setting for a phew days, just to make sure everything was dead. Whilst we did this we scrubbed the filter and placed filter sponges in boiling water and left them to soak and after a couple days we did a water change turned the heater down added the clean filter and added new bacteria to start a new cycle in the tank. Eventually after 2 weeks of cycling (just to make sure) he bought the tank some new inhabitants.

We may have been a bit over clean but it doesnt hurt to really make sure the little @*^%!!*@' Are dead now does it?

 

[StandbySetting]

Pouring boiling water on glass is never a good idea, not float glass anyway, a mild chlorine bleach solution (1 part bleach to 9 parts water) to rinse it out with should do the trick, then just double up on dechlorinator to remove any bleach residue.

 

[fishy_momma]

We cleaned our 46 gallon with the bleach solution. We did it outside and rinsed it several times. We set it back up inside without the filter and used dechlorinator several times over a couple weeks ( probably overkill, but I wanted to be careful after the bleach). And since after that you basically have a "new" tank, we ran a fishless cycle before adding fish back.

 

[giants1249er]

We cleaned our 46 gallon with the bleach solution. We did it outside and rinsed it several times. We set it back up inside without the filter and used dechlorinator several times over a couple weeks ( probably overkill, but I wanted to be careful after the bleach). And since after that you basically have a "new" tank, we ran a fishless cycle before adding fish back.

What about the old filter?

 

[Aqua Tom]

Here is a wonderfull thread about treating Ich. Even though your tank is now empty of fish you should still follow the procedure to kill of any remaining parasites.


What is Ich


Tom

 

[Rynofasho]

Ich will die without a host in 3 days or so. Just let it run for a week and call it a day

 

[giants1249er]

Someone on another fish site suggested using Potassium Permanganate. Anyone tried this?

 

[Aqua Tom]

Someone on another fish site suggested using Potassium Permanganate. Anyone tried this?

Not personaly.


I use Malachite Green to treat Ich.


Tom

 

[willowstwin]

only problem with using potassium permanganate is that I wouldn't know what it would do to the aquarium glass. Also it depends on how long you leave it, but if I have had solutions in my lab in glassware for a couple of days it starts to stain the glass brown (even though it's a purple liquid). Also, where would you get potassium permanganate outside of a lab?

 

[giants1249er]

only problem with using potassium permanganate is that I wouldn't know what it would do to the aquarium glass. Also it depends on how long you leave it, but if I have had solutions in my lab in glassware for a couple of days it starts to stain the glass brown (even though it's a purple liquid). Also, where would you get potassium permanganate outside of a lab?

The person that suggested this got it from Sears. I won't go this route since not too many people have responded using this on here and on my other fish sites. Thanks for everyone's help.