Rescued Fish

[pir]

Greetings Everyone,
 
I wish I had thought to come here and post before I did anything at all, but here's my story, and a request for help.
 
I rescued some fish from an abandoned apartment -- they had been unattended in a building with no power for about 5 days.  There were (amazingly) no dead fish, though they were clearly highly stressed and hungry.  There were a few neon tetras, ane one each: black skirt, serpae tetra, zebra danio and red tail shark, split between two tanks.  Both tanks were absolutely disgusting.  I didn't know anything about fish care, but talked to some people at a big box pet store (I know, that was a mistake) and came up with a plan:
 
I initially put all the fish into the 40 l. tank, got it warmed up to 27C and filtration and lighting going and did a 50% water change.  The fish were all OK at this point, but some of them weren't eating, and I realized the tank was too small for all of them (the shark was chasing the other fish aggressively, and had clearly been biting some of them before I rescued them) -- so I made my first mistake: I took the other tank (100 l.) emptied and cleaned it thoroughly (3% bleach soak), rinsed and dried it, set it up witih clean gravel, clean fake plants and let it run with a new filter for 24 hours.  By this time several of the the fish were starting to seem very distressed indeed, so I made mistake #2: I added all the fish from the small tank over the course of a day.  All the neons died within about 8 hours.  Then the black skirt tetra died after a few more hours. I was devastated.  Here I thought I was rescuing these poor abandoned fish, and I had ended up kiling them instead. 
 
It's now been a few days and the danio is doing great, the serpae tetra is doing OK (seems lethargic) and the shark is (I think) in serious trouble: he's got one cloudy eye and doesn't seem to be eating.
 
I now realize I should have kept the original tank water that they were living in, disgusting or not, and just done partial water changes.
 
I've read that antibiotic treatment might belp with the shark's cloudy eye, but don't want to do anything now to make things worse than they already are.
 
Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
pir

 

[fluttermoth]

Hi pir; I'm sorry things have gone so badly for you, after you've tried to do the right thing!
 
What's most important right now is; do you still have the old filter and has it been cleaned out at all? If it hasn't, give anything that's inside it (the filter 'media'; it could be sponges, or ceramic 'noodles') a quick clean in some tank water; do NOT over clean it, and use only tank water, NOT tap, and get that in the tank.
 
There will be good bacteria in the old filter that eat some of the fish's wastes and help to keep the water from becoming toxic; this is the main purpose of the filter, really, not taking 'bits' out of the water. If you over clean the filter or the media, or clean it in tap water, you lose all those good bacteria. The new filter you put in the tank won't have had any of those good bacteria, so it was probably a build up of fish wastes, as well as the all new water, that killed the fish.
 
The next thing you will need are some test kits, so you can monitor the water quality. Nearly all fish 'diseases' are actually caused by poor water; and how it looks to your eyes is no indication of how good it might be for the fish. Hydrochloric acid is clear as a bell, but it wouldn't do your fish much good!
 
The important toxins you need to watch are ammonia and nitrite. Get liquid or tablet tests, not the paper strip kind. API, Nutrafin and Salifert are all good makes. You need to keep both ammonia and nitrite as near to zero as you can with partial water changes.
 
Make sure the new water is warmed and dechlorinated. The shark's eye should clear up when the water quality improves.
 
Good luck, and do post back if you need more help; there's always some one around on his forum to give you some good advice

 

[Akasha72]

so sorry you tried to do the right thing and ended up in a mess ... I really feel for you
 
I'm just here to say fluttermoth gave you some good advice there and to say I'm around quite a bit and will help where I can.Good luck

 

[pir]

Thanks for your advice!  I purchased a new pump and filter -- the old one was not working well, and was too small for the larger tank.  Unfortunately I already tossed it.  I do have one filter left from the larger tank that I didn't clean, though it's dried out.  It doesn't fit the new pump I have though -- would it help if I just drop it in the tank for a while?
 
I have test strips:
 
ammonia 0.5
nitrate 0
nitrite 0 (or maybe 0.1?)
chlorine 0
hardness (GH) 75
KH 60
pH 7.2
 
So I guess that all looks OK?
 
Thanks for your advice!

 

[TallTree01]

Sounds like a nightmare mate. Fluttermoth has pointed you in the right direction, clean water and stable conditions is the number one thing you need be concerned with now.
You should definitely invest in an aquarium water test kit. API's liquid drop test kit is my favorite, but there are several other brands too.
Also, ask your fish store or any friends you might have for some preused filter media. If it has recently been in an established aquarium, the bacteria on it will still be live to biologically remove toxins.

EDIT: just saw your latest response, the strips are known to be quite unreliable at times. A liquid test kit is far more accurate.
Just putting in a filter with media on it without a pump won't do much, but anywhere for bacteria to colonize on would help a small amount.

 

[Akasha72]

if you still have the filter that's not working so well and it's got some sponges inside it see if there is anyway you can stuff the sponges into the new filter. What you need is to keep hold of those dirty sponges (or what ever it had inside) as they are holding good bacteria that the fish need to survive.
 
On to those test results ... they're not so great. A reading of 0.5 Ammonia is toxic and will kill the fish if you don't get it down. You'll need to lower it by doing a 50% water change - remembering to dechlorinate the fresh water in the bucket - if you are using buckets. If you are using a hose to re-fill then add enough dechlorinator for the whole tank volume - not just for the 50% changed.
 
The fact that Nitrate is zero is also a concern. All cycled tanks should get a Nitrate reading so the fact that it's zero means the tank isn't cycling. Please don't get confused between Nitrate and Nitrite ... Nitrite needs to be zero, Nitrate is usually around the 40ppm mark on a cycling tank.
 
As TallTree said - the test strips are really inaccurate. When you get a moment get a liquid test kit, I'll also advocate the API Masterkit - it contains all that you will need for now.
 
Hope that helps

 

[pir]

Thanks again for the advice everyone. 
 
I managed to stuff the old dirty filter into the new pump -- hopefully that'll get the ecosystem jumpstarted a little faster.  I just hope that the little shark can hold on until the tank actually starts cycling.  I actually have a liquid test kit too, but haven't used it yet.    I did a water change too -- I have been slightly overfeeding because two of the tree fish didn't seem to be eating much... so that is probably why the ammonia was up even that high, though I've been vaccuming the food off the bottom every other day (essentially doing a 2-3% water change)  I'll keep a closer eye on the ammonia and do larger water changes when it goes up again.
 
I'll post back soon and let you folks know how the fish are doing.

 

[Akasha72]

great news ... keep the feeding to a minimum and clean up any uneaten food within about 30 minutes if you can - every other day isn't enough really. You'd be surprised how fast ammonia and nitrite can appear and keep building. Uneaten food is often the worst culprit.
 
Right now I'd test the water twice a day and if you see any ammonia or nitrite then do a water change. A good way to think of it I find, is if you have 0.5ppm of ammonia then 50% of the water is ammonia so you need to change 50% of the water for clean water - does that make sense? 

 

[pir]

Yes, thanks, that makes sense.

 

[pir]

Hi again,
 
I just had an idea (it might be terrible, I'm not sure): I collect rainwater for my garden, would it be OK to add some (or a lot) to the tank?  Would that help at all?  My tapwater is from a well (so zero chlorine) but I'm sure the rainwater in my rainbarell has more microorganisms in it than what comes out of my fawcet.  We just had some big rains, so it's even reasonably fresh rainwater. I live in a very rural area so pollution isn't an issue.
 
Thanks!

 

[TallTree01]

great news ... keep the feeding to a minimum and clean up any uneaten food within about 30 minutes if you can - every other day isn't enough really. You'd be surprised how fast ammonia and nitrite can appear and keep building. Uneaten food is often the worst culprit.
 
Right now I'd test the water twice a day and if you see any ammonia or nitrite then do a water change. A good way to think of it I find, is if you have 0.5ppm of ammonia then 50% of the water is ammonia so you need to change 50% of the water for clean water - does that make sense?

Akasha, I'm not sure if you were simplifying it to make it more understandable or not but 0.5 ppm of ammonia does not mean half the water is ammonia. Ppm is parts per million. That means for every million parts, 0.5 of those parts are ammonia. If it were half it would be 500,000 ppm. 0.5 parts per million Seems minuscule but it's enough to heavily damage most fish.


Now to Pir,
About taking from rainwater, it can be quite complicated. If the water has touched anything bad or at some point on its way down from the sky it has collected something, there could be trouble. These days there's all sorts of nasties in our air. You could do it and probably not see any effects, but it is a risk that ought to be thought about.

Am I right in saying the red tail shark is the only fish left alive?

 

[pir]

Thanks TallTree for the clarification -- I think I got the intent of the original poster though, in that .5 is too much NH3 and to reduce it by half (to .25) is healthier for the fish.
 
Yeah, I guess I'll have to think about the rainwater and maybe collect some in a clean barrel.  Hopefully the innoculation from the old tank will get the tank cycling.
 
The zebra danio is alive and seemingly doing splendidly, the serpae tetra seems to be OK too, even though I've not seen it eat much.  The shark seems to be getting livelier, but does spend a lot of time "hiding" behind plants.  It was only the neon tetras and the black skirt tetra that all died within a day.

 

[Akasha72]

I was trying to simplify things as if there is 0.5ppm of ammonia then it will take a 50% water change to zero it. I was just explaining my way of thinking. It's not mathematically correct it's just 'my way'. I was trying to pass that over to to pir in a simple way that they might understand
 
I can't help you on the rain water ... I think that's better dealt with the guys in the U.S

 

[pir]

I just did a liquid ammonia test, and I see what you folks mean about the strips not being very accurate.  The strip is still saying around .5 but the liquid test is telling me the total NH3/NH4 levels are around .1 ppm and further explains about the percentage of actually toxic ammonia being only a fraction of that based on temp and pH (in my case about 20%, so .02) -- strip test still saying nitrate/nitrite at zero -- I haven't done the other liquid tests yet, but things seem to be improving!  The shark's cloudy eye seems to be clearing already!

 

[Akasha72]

glad to hear it. It sounds like you are on the right track again