Why did our TROPICAL FISH-LOOK LIKE THEY WERE DEAD AFTER HUSBAND CLEANED THE TANK?
My husband nearly killed all his fish yesterday.
The way he cleans the tank, is removing, plants and ornaments. Then He takes a big hose, sucks all the scum and dirty water out. He does this while the fish are still in the tank. of course there is some water still in the tank. I always thought that your were to remove the fish while cleaning the tank.
Anyhow, he added several gallons of cured water that was at room temperature, then supplemented the rest of the water with tap, and a p.h. balancer. Those poor fish looked like they were dying! Most were belly up and the others were kind of bobbing around.
I think, that the water he added from the tap was too cold, and so Mr. Genius says next time he’ll add HOT WATER from the tap.
I told him he should take the fish out, add the water and let it sit for several hours before returning the fish to the tank.
Fortunately several hours later they were OK. No deaths.
What went wrong. How can we prevent this from happening again? Thanks!
April 8th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
never take the fish out of the tank just do a 10-15% water change once a week and dont be too rough the fish were probably stressed
April 8th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
He may be removing too much water. If you do that, it shocks the fish. They are used to certain water conditions and now it’s completely differant. You should only change about 20% of the total water once a week. Unless of course, there is something wrong with the water (like ammonia) and then you would need to remove more.
Same goes for the tempature of the water he’s putting into the tank, it needs to match the temp of the water already in the tank. That too can shock the fish. And don’t let him put hot water in there! lol
Do you guys have a test kit? If so, test the water. He may have vacuumed too much water and messed with the gravel too much. Which can cause nitrate to go up and that can cause an ammonia spike. Which can harm fish.
April 8th, 2010 at 11:22 pm
the fish were in shock. My ex boy friend cleans his tank the same way, and his fish are always okay.
April 9th, 2010 at 12:21 am
Best not to remove the fish for a water change and tank cleaning, we never did. I would save extra gallon jugs and let the water come to room temp before adding back to the aquarium. Hot water depletes oxygen, I don’t think I would add hot water. Possibly he had waited too long and there was an ammonia build up in the tank? Attached are some helpful links. Best wishes!
http://www. petuniversity. com/fish/freshwater-fish/setting-up-an-aquarium/maintenance. htm
http://www. aquariumfish. net/information/maintenance_schedule. htm
http://www. aquariumguys. com/aquarium-maintenance-guide. html
http://www. fishchannel. com/freshwater-aquariums/default. aspx
http://www. drhelm. com/aquarium/maintenance. html
Hope these help!
April 9th, 2010 at 12:50 am
Leaving fish in the tank is best, catching them and moving them will just shock them more. Likewise I leave all the decorations in there, although I will move them occasionally to clean under them.
I suspect that something about the new water was very different to the tank water. Either the pH was way different or the temperature, either will send the fish into shock.
Simplest way to avoid this is to do smaller but more frequent water changes. Just syphon out some water and the gunge with the gravel vac (20%) or so, then top up with treated tap water at about the same temperature. Do this every week. You dont want to change the parameters of the water suddenly, thats whats shocked the fish. And yes you can add a bit of hot water to your bucket to get the temp of the new water close. I do that in winter when the tap water is much colder.
BTW, you can do large water changes safely, as long as the new water is similar to the old. My big tank gets 50% changes each week, and the fish love water change day. They come and play in the hose stream as the tank refills. But because I am changing so much, so often, the tank pH stays close to the tap water. As long as the temp is similar all the fish notice is a stream of nice clean water coming in, and they love that.
Ian
April 9th, 2010 at 1:09 am
Don’t take the fish out of the tank. The best thing is to do a 30% water change every 2 weeks. Tap water is fine at normal temperature but you will need to use your water conditioner each time you do the change. He could have been too efficient with his cleaning and cleaned a lot of the good bacteria out of the tank that the fish need to live so the cycle then has to start again.
I have had this problem before after being too efficient cleaning my filter.