tank crashes...

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riffless

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May 10, 2003
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I've experienced two tank crashes in the past year, where I've lost most fish from a tank, with maybe one fish out of a dozen surviving... the tank have both been 30 gallon community tanks... one tank was thought to have been poisoned by cigarette smoke (my house is now smoke free, so problem solved?), while the other was thought to be poisoned through accidental contamination or possible gross over feeding ( the second crash waswithin a three to four hour period after a feeding... using roommates to feed your fish can have dire rammifications)... anyhow, wanted to hear if anyone has had the same problems, or am i some sort of a fish butcher? the second crash killed a tank full of fish that had lived through a couple ph spikes and algae blooms, and had done well for two plus years, so these were fairly hearty fish... any thoughts would be great
 

anonapersona

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Mar 7, 2003
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feeding for dummies

When I leave town and have to let someone else feed the fish I make small envelopes out of wax paper with about 1/2 the regular amount of food. When I leave there are 10 little packets taped to the front of the tank, each labeled M, T, W, Th, etc. I leave instructions that if a day is missed, it is OK to feed two packets at once.

Since the packet is half portions, even double dosing is not too much food. The person watching the house is not tempted to feed extra, I have hidden the food containers, and there is food for every day so they are happy and the fish are happy.

Most of my fish can go for a week wihtout feeding, expecially the ones in the planted tanks, but I do want to be sure that nothing has sprung a leak or suffered in a short power failure that killed the HOB filters, and that the lights are functioning. The big cichlids tend to kill each other if they don't get food so they do need daily attention, as does the cat, but the little fish would be fine for 3 days easy.

If you have a roommate, try the packet method, fish feeding for dummies, but don't call him that to his face :laugh:
 

Chrisp71MO

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Feb 13, 2004
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Cigarette smoke? 1st time I EVER heard of that! I am a heavy smoker (2-2 1/2 packs a day) and spend most of my day less then 10 feet from the aquarium. Definately need more details such as how long was set up before eacvh crash, size of tank, number of fish, maintainence habits, water chemistry etc.
 

riffless

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here's the specifics on both incidents...

first off, both tanks are 30 g, 7.0 ph water changes (5 g each time) averaging once a month, under gravel filters and aquamaster 250s used on both tanks

first incident happened about 6 months ago... (this is the one that might have been attributed to smoking) it was a tank stocked with 6 green tiger barbs, 2 golden barbs, 3 cherry barbs, 2 rosy barbs and one pleco... the tank basically "crashed" in that all the fish started acting ill and died one after the other... I had the tank set up for about 6 months at this point.... after I'd lost enough fish (5 or so), i took the remaining ones to the lfs, where i was told that they had been poisoned somehow... the only logical explaination was high levels of cigarette smoke in the area... i live in a "band house" (there's members of a couple bands here, so it's a high traffic house) where there are three heavy smokers, a couple of which were unemployed at the time, so they were smoking indoors a lot, so that was the best explaination we could come up with... out of all those fish, one gold barb survived and is living with all new tank mates in the same tank (after thorough cleaning and a total smoking ban in my house) and they are all doing well together

second one was in a separate tank which contained 2 glass cats, 2 glo lites, two pygmy frogs, 2 emperor tetras, 5 hatchets (2 marble, 3 silver), and a cleaner (kind of ray looking, i don't remember the species)... i left town and had my roommate feed my fish for the weekend... he last fed them sunday night around 9 pm... i got in around midnight and 5 fish were dead with a bunch of food in the tank... i did a ph and ammonia test, with results of 6.8 ph and 0 ammonia... i did an immediate 5 g water change and hoped they would right themselves, but both the cats were dead in the a.m., so i move the rest to a sparsely populated 20 g in the same room... the last hatchet died day before yesterday, and they seemed to have some burns in their gills and maybe eyes.. the only survivors are the frogs and the cleaner... most of these fish i'd had for two years, and they'd been through a lot (ph spikes, algae blooms) so i figured they were pretty hearty... i initially thought over-feeding, but my roommate swears he fed them a normal amount, but I suspect he might have been drunk and blew it... the only other thing he thought it might be was something from work on his hands like cleaning solution or something like that, which begs the question, why wouldn't you wash your hands after handling stuff like that? but it his life, but unfortunately my fishes lives too... anyways, any old pros out there got a horror story or two like this? let me know, and if you made it to the end of this post, thanks!
 

blitzen25bm

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do you test for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates?
 

Neo Sithlord

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Mar 20, 2004
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What kind of stuff would he have had on his hands from work? The thing that got me about the last post though was you mentioned he might have been drunk LOL. Don't suppose he'd be the type to share with the fish? Alchohol in a small ammont could poison a small fish. I'd think even a shot in a tank could be enough to hurt them and wouldn't show up on any test kits.
 

Chrisp71MO

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Feb 13, 2004
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Neo your thoughts are exactly what I was thinking being in a "band" house more likely that something was dropped or spilled into the tank. It would be almost impossible for cigarette smoke to be in high enough concentrations to poison the waters to that type of level. One major problem I see was that only a 5 gal water change per month on a 30 gal with that much stock in them you should be changing 10 gal a WEEK!
 

happychem

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Dec 9, 2003
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Yup, that would be my guess. Looks like your water changes are far too infrequent. I change at least 5g per week on my 10g. Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate are all indicators of organic waste in your water. However, the bacteria we try so hard to cultivate in the cycling process convert NH3 and NO2 to NO3, but they do nothing about the organics. I'm guessing that you have a buildup of organic materials in your tank that slowly poisoned your fish.
 

riffless

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thanks for the input, but a question....

how often are you guys/gals changing your filters.... the lfs told me in the past to do a water change, wait a week, change the filter, wait a couple weeks, change the water... I've come across so many conflicting ideas on this that I have basically changed the water (5g for 30g tanks) once a month, with a filter change once every two months on the back filter, and undergravel carbon filter changes once every three months... maybe i'm screwed up here, i've been running these aquariums for a couple years now and haven't had too bad of luck, with the exception of the two massive crashes that I've had.... as for the smoke factor, the only reason that seemed plausible was the fact that I run 3 lift towers in each tank, as well as a four inch bubble strip, to I'm constantly cycling air through my tanks... but it could have been other factors, but that's why we (me and the lfs staff) came up with that as one possible reason for the deaths...
 
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