Omg Help!

[LauraFrog]

Parents + net banking, paypal, ebay, aquabid etc = World War III. I've been nagging for years. No luck.

I'm doing something radical. I'm going to take water from the (healthy) outdoors tanks and transfer it to an empty 6 gal, as much as I can. Then I'm putting all the fish, and nothing else from their tank, into the 6 gal, which probably won't be full but anyway. Then if they improve, one by one everything in that tank gets tested with fry until I work out what's wrong. Whatever is making them sick gets the el-chuck-o. Tank gets restarted, fishless cycle, put fry in it. If they survive, the fish go back.

If you think this is a bad idea, please speak up now because in about 15 minutes all three are going out there. There's a fry in there as well, I'll chuck it in too if I can catch it.

 

[LauraFrog]

UPDATE: 6 gal is running. I used cycled water out of the other tank (which is now approx 1/2 full and very overstocked. This is an emergency measure) and fry tank, same deal. I had to use some rainwater, but I spread the rainwater over the fry tank, new tank and other fish tank. Hopefully this will help.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what have you done about filtration for the 6gal, have you got a cycled filter in there. water doesn't become 'cycled' and as such adding old water won't help (aside from obviously not reintroducing contaminents if there is something manky in the water supply)

if you have other healthy running tanks take some media from them and put this into the 6gal tanks filter.

the tank which you think is contaminated and is now empty, strip it down completely, wait a few weeks until the water supply has hopefully recovered, then wash the tank , equipment, decor etc etc etc in a weak bleach solution (20 parts water to 1 part bleach) get new gravel ornaments etc where possible (understand financial constraints may not allow) then fishless cycle it and start over. The bleaching should get rid of contaminents.

I would strongly advise you to consider investing some money in a RO unit. Don't know australian prices but here they start at £50. However it means that regardless of the weather and water supply you can always have good clean water for you're fish. You will need to remineralise the water but it's not a big expense to do that, you just buy some sachets.

 

[LauraFrog]

what have you done about filtration for the 6gal

Don't flame me for this, please don't flame me for this but I don't have a spare filter. I've put a bag of active carbon in the water in the hope that it absorbs anything that leaches out of the fishes bodies. Tomorrow it's LFS. There are airstones in the tank and I'm going to get an air driven filter tomorrow as well. I would like better but the LFS has zip. I have loads of cycled media. Is there any point putting some in without an actual filter?

As for the reverse osmosis - I would like to but in Australia it's not the money but the water that's the issue. Reverse osmosis wastes a huge amount of water, I read somewhere about 30:1 water in:water out. I can't afford to waste that much water. We've been in drought for the past six years and it has only just broken this wet season.

The town water is the same supply as the LFS, they were doing water changes the last time I was in there and their fish were fine. Tomorrow I get town water. I'm going to change the water in 6 gal to remove any ammonia when I get the town water, I'm also adding beneficial bacteria cultures to it now.

Platies in my care have survived worse. I'm ashamed to say, this clueless newbie whacked eight platies and a bristlenose in the same UNCYCLED five gallon tank and they all lived there for three months with one death. That was months ago now, but anyway.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what have you done about filtration for the 6gal

Don't flame me for this, please don't flame me for this but I don't have a spare filter. I've put a bag of active carbon in the water in the hope that it absorbs anything that leaches out of the fishes bodies. Tomorrow it's LFS. There are airstones in the tank and I'm going to get an air driven filter tomorrow as well. I would like better but the LFS has zip. I have loads of cycled media. Is there any point putting some in without an actual filter?

As for the reverse osmosis - I would like to but in Australia it's not the money but the water that's the issue. Reverse osmosis wastes a huge amount of water, I read somewhere about 30:1 water in:water out. I can't afford to waste that much water. We've been in drought for the past six years and it has only just broken this wet season.

The town water is the same supply as the LFS, they were doing water changes the last time I was in there and their fish were fine. Tomorrow I get town water. I'm going to change the water in 6 gal to remove any ammonia when I get the town water, I'm also adding beneficial bacteria cultures to it now.

Platies in my care have survived worse. I'm ashamed to say, this clueless newbie whacked eight platies and a bristlenose in the same UNCYCLED five gallon tank and they all lived there for three months with one death. That was months ago now, but anyway.

don't worry about me flaming you, i don't flame anyone, however there are occasions where you have to be relativley stern. If I ever am stern with anyone it's because the point needs to be made and they need to take it seriously. To be flaming is an unnescessary attack giving no constructive help. I would like to think that I am always constructive at least.

But Ok, you know that having no cycled filter is bad news, carbon won't absorb ammonia so it's not gonna help. However here's what you can do, take the filter from the dodgy contaminated tank, scrub it out in a bleach solution (needs to be plain thin bleach not fragranced or anything like that that you'd use for cleaning) in the UK I can get this stuff for about 20p from my corner shop so I'm assuming it's easy to get in australia too. Scrub the filter about a zillion times, throw away the media from it and then replace it with cycled media from another uncontaminated tank, put this in the 6 gal and it should be ok.

A really bloody good clean should get rid of any nasties on the actual filter, the media will obviously be uncontaminted if it comes from a healthy tank.

If you don't want to do that then yes put some media in something like a pair of tights. It won't do much unless there is circulation in the tank so if you can add a pump or airstone or something like that it'll help. But if not then resort to manual circulation, every couple of hrs just stir the tank a bit (obviously don't give the fish a whirlpool but just move the water around for a few minutes) this will be better than nothing for te day until you can get an air filter tomorrow.

Totally accept your point re the RO unit. Long term though you do need to find some solution if your water supply is dodgy. I would advise going over to the marine forum cos I know there's some guys from australia there and they must use some form of purification so they may be able to advise you on something more appropriate.

 

[LauraFrog]

I have found a supply of decent water, and it's not full of chlorine either. It's probably temporary but it will get me over this crisis.

I stripped out the tank, and I have all the plants, gravel, filter media, inverts, wood, rocks etc in buckets. I managed to avoid having to bleach it but it got scrubbed out. I've got a very thin (~1cm) layer of gravel from a cycled tank, new filter sponges but carbon, bio rings, bio balls from a cycled tank. The tank is still going to hit a mini-cycle but I have treated - ahem, overdosed - it with beneficial bacteria cultures. No feeding for a few days until I can start replacing gravel and get ammonia levels stabilised. I'm not happy about this because they haven't been fed for over a week, but they were not thin to start with and are only a little underweight now.

The fish are back in the tank with 100% new water, bacteria culture from the same jar I've been using for months, gravel and two fake ornaments to give them the little security I can provide. The male is fine. The females have fanned out their fins and are much more active, they look a lot better. Both have secondary infections from the stress. One has finrot, and the other has something in the hole on her head that looks like fungus. I'm wary though because it could be columnaris. Hard to tell because the treatment has turned the water cloudy. I'll be able to tell in a few hours.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

sounds like a reasonable course of action, got my fingers crossed.

one thing i will say is be careful with the meds, they may kill off the bacteria colony so to have that in the tank at the same time as a mini cycle could elongate the cycle. However i totally appreciate you need to treat the fish so there's not a hell of a lot you can do about it, just something to be aware of.

 

[LauraFrog]

I haven't started treatment yet, neither fish is serious. My LFS uses this water treatment despite it being extremely expensive, which was enough to convince me it must be good because they treat thousands of gallons of water with it weekly and I paid over $30 for a 120g jar. They say leave it two days and then you can start adding salt. I'm going to put salt in the water at 2tsp/gallon and then treat the two sick fish separately. The finrot I cured with salt on another fish, using 30 minute seawater dips, so I might as well do that again and hope it works. The other fish - I guess I'll wait until I can tell whether it's got a fungal infection or columnaris. I hope it's fungus, columnaris is a pain in the a$$. I've got the water level in the tank at about 3/4, which is as low as I can go without burning out the pump. The filter is splashing water everywhere, and I figure the more oxygen in the water the better. My arms still hurt from carrying buckets of water over 2km - but I'll survive because the fish did!

The male is waving his gonopodium around and chasing the females in circles. This has to be a good thing! THanks so much for all the advice!

 

[kribensis12]

Your welcome !I hope they all make it! Would love to see some pics.

 

[LauraFrog]

they are EATING ALFALFA PELLETS!

Every normal fish behavior I see makes me even happier...

 

[kribensis12]

CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!!! PIC'S? HINT HINT!

 

[LauraFrog]

What do you want pics for? Pics of healthy (YES YES YES!!!) fish in an essentially empty tank? It will look like the last pics I put up in a few days time. I'm adding the gravel back slowly in case there's something nasty in it, about half has gone back and the fish are fine.
And my fallax tadpole GREW FRONT LEGS!!! So healthy fish and tame frogs. Good day in other words. lol

 

[kribensis12]

Because i love looking at fish ofcourse! Why else? Congrats on your tadpole's!!!! Im always excited when a tadpole grows legs and arms!

 

[LauraFrog]

All the gravel is back and the fish are fine.
Adding wood with anubias tonight, because the anubias needs some decent light or it will cark on me. I forked out twenty bucks for it and i don't want it to die.

[offtopic rant about frogs]

The tadpole is now a frog. And I couldn't live without tadpoles so I got me some more. Common Greens/Whites Tree Frog which is native to my area of Australia and spawned in the ditches on the high school oval. Idiots.
Current species list of tadpoles:
Litoria fallax
Litoria caerulea
Litoria genimaculata (Classified as RARE)
Litoria rubella
Litoria gracilenta
Opisthodon ornatus.

So pretty happy. It's been a good year for tadpoles. Its so funny when I was getting them out of the drain on the oval. These boys were chucking in rocks to splash me and I came up dripping with muck, it was in my hair and all over my face and clothes. And one of them looked me in the face and said "You're a nerd." And I'm like, "Yeah. So?" You should have seen the look on his face! I just about cracked up!

[/offtopic rant about frogs]

 

[kribensis12]

lol! A sfar as i know, we dont get tree frogs in Illinois! If we did i'd be looking for tadpoles! Im a nerd and i accept it, if you dont you'll go crazy.

Back on topic.

I hope your plants make it! Im glad you fishy's are doing better!