Hi. I have a 20 gallon tank with 5 neons, 1 Chineese Algae Eater and 2 hatchetts. It has been running for 4 months, fully cycled. We had a power outage and my filter went down completely for over 24 hours (I was out of town). Now, the tank is a mess. It is so cloudy I can't see to the back of the tank, smelly and fish gasping at top. I ran to the store and bought a new filter and have 2 running now. This at least got the fish some oxygen. It has been 2 weeks and tank will not clear. Ammonia is still present but lower. I have been doing frequent h2o changes to dilute but cloudiness is no better. I feel so bad for my fish and have always been so conscientious in tank maintenance. Please advise.
Aquarium crashed!
- Thread starter rebeccapavek
- Start date
It sounds like the power outage either lasted a long time, or the filter didn't restart afterwards. Either case resulted in the starvation of most of your bacteria, since they need to flowing water both to provide food (ammonia and nitrites) and oxygen.
When the filter was re-started, the nasty guck in there got dumped into the system. Sounds like you have a nutrition overload, and need to recycle the tank. Since you have fish in there, that means lots of water changes. You can't do too many water changes! You might want to use 1 tsp salt per gallon of water (add the salt slowly, over the course of several hours) to help the fish cope with the nitrite spike that is coming, keep up the water changes, and the tank should find it's balance again. If you can obtain the mulm (the solids that settle from the water after cleaning the gravel) from an existing tank, this will help out a lot, since it will reseed your tank with the beneficial bacteria and micro fauna. If the fish seem to gasp, adding a bubbler for increased surface agitation might help out in the short term.
I'd also reduce feeding size and amounts, to reduce the waste the fish are contributing to the system. Adding some quick growing plants, even temporarily, like anachris, will also help the fish.
When the filter was re-started, the nasty guck in there got dumped into the system. Sounds like you have a nutrition overload, and need to recycle the tank. Since you have fish in there, that means lots of water changes. You can't do too many water changes! You might want to use 1 tsp salt per gallon of water (add the salt slowly, over the course of several hours) to help the fish cope with the nitrite spike that is coming, keep up the water changes, and the tank should find it's balance again. If you can obtain the mulm (the solids that settle from the water after cleaning the gravel) from an existing tank, this will help out a lot, since it will reseed your tank with the beneficial bacteria and micro fauna. If the fish seem to gasp, adding a bubbler for increased surface agitation might help out in the short term.
I'd also reduce feeding size and amounts, to reduce the waste the fish are contributing to the system. Adding some quick growing plants, even temporarily, like anachris, will also help the fish.