Some One Cooked My Frog.

[Stroker]

I came into my office Tuesday and my frog was dead. I took him out and that was the only fish in there at the time. When I came in Wedesday I noticed the temp was off the chart and the water was hot enough to take a nice bath in. I put several cups of ice in and brought the temp back on the chart but still high. It cooled off the rest over night and I plugged the heater in and brought it up a few degrees to 78. I finally got around to testing and the results are as follows: Nitrate 10, Nitrite 2, amonia .25, ph 6.8. Thats a low pH from what we usually get around here. Do you think these readings are from the heat or do you think they were bad before the heat?

I am thinking my next step is to add amonia and get the cycle settled back in before restocking, is this correct? If so, aren't glass shrimp good with ADF's? I'm thinking 2 of each.

 

[backtotropical]

I think the temperature increase probably killed the frog.

Your readings may be the result of the increase in temperature, the bacteria in your filter need oxygen to stay alive and the hotter water gets, the less oxygen saturation, so the lack of oxygen in the heated water may have damaged your filter.

Having said that, i couldn't say for sure. When did you last take readings before this happened?

I would throw out your heater anyway, i'd say that caused the overheating almost certainly. Buy a new one.

 

[murphyk32]

from what ive heard, imo id also throw away the heater to avoid this happening again...

 

[Stroker]

The heater has an adjustment dial, I think a coworker or one of the office children messed with it not knowing better. I have it set correctly now and have taped the dial in place. The last recorded test was about a month ago so it's too old to go by. I did test it about two weeks ago and all was normal so I didn't record it (I know bad idea). I've got the ammonia here so I'll go back to daily dosses and see what happens.

 

[backtotropical]

I don't know how familiar you are with fishless cycling, so i'd advise you to take a look at the link in my signature to the 'fishless cycling' thread.

Good luck.

 

[Stroker]

I looked at my notes from when I did the first fishless cycle and 6 drops is what I was adding so I added that. It'll be a little more then 12 hours but I'll look at it when I go in tomorrow and see how it looks. Man I hope it's ok I really don't want to go to work every day, specially on the weekend.