Complete Wipe advice

[Bortass]

This is not easy to post and I'm looking for some advice on something. I'm depressed enough about what happened and don't need anyone telling me I'm an idiot. I already know that part.

My 130 gal FW tank completely wiped overnight 100% fatality rate. My wife and I have been keeping fish for 20 years or so. One of the fish in the tank was a common pleco that my wife had before I met her back in 1992. The other occupants were 3 clown loaches that we've had for 5 years, some corys, danios, and cherry barbs. The last time we added fish to the tank was probably 2 years ago.

The tank itself has been setup in it's current location for about 4 years.

The tank went completely south in under 12 hours.

This is what I did. I tore down my 120 SW tank a few days ago. Yesterday I took the HOB overflow and the return pump and plumbing and created a small DIY wet/dry. All I had in the W/D was a filter pad from a LFS that I picked up a few years ago. I also added a seio PH from the SW tank to increase the current. I had rinsed everything off and scrubbed it a bit.

I made these changes because the tank is always messy. The PH was to increase flow to suspend the particulate matter, so the overflow would pull it into the filter pad.

The Seio PH ran all night. The new W/D I ran for maybe 40 minutes last night and plugged back in the morning. I let in run maybe 90 minutes before going back to turn on the lights. I did notice that I was getting some foam where the tank water was hitting the filterpad. Kinda like a protein skimmer. This didn't happen at all last night.

So I assume that either I missed something in my rinsing of the hardware from the SW tank or the additional current kicked up a gas pocket.


My question is if I restart a tank. Can I use any of the driftwood that was in the tank during the wipe? I honestly have no clue what exactly killed everything. I just know it has to do with what I did yesterday.

I didn't expect this to happen at all. I just thought of another question.

The pleco was a good 16 inches long. If it died would it have taken the entire tank with it inside a few hours? I kinda doubt it personally.

So all I know is I killed all my fish but don't know exactly why. Sigh

 

[reefdiver]

boil your driftwood. Did you test your water to see if any of the normal parameters had change? Maybe the SW equipment was not that clean at all. Did you boil it to disinfect? maybe you can post pics or any distinguishing mark on your fish.

 

[darkk]

I can't offer any answers, I'm just a clutz when it comes to fish. But I am offering my condolences, I know what it's like to lose pets...

 

[platytudes]

It sounds very strange...did you check the water, do you have water test results? Perhaps a pH crash or an ammonia spike? A sudden increase in pH can make ammonia much more deadly.

I don't see why a 16" pleco couldn't send any tank into havoc, that's a lot of dead rotting fish! How far along was his decomposition, though?

What do the fish look like? Just dead?

Gas pockets are pretty rare in actual practice - do you have gravel or sand?

Did you add anything to the tank such as a pH buffer, sludge remover, etc. when you were sprucing it up? Have you checked your dechlorinator for expiration date, etc.?

Sorry to keep babbling. Just saying anything that comes to mind.

I'm sure you feel awful about this and honestly, I don't see that you did anything blatantly wrong at all. Maybe it will jump out at someone else.

My deepest condolences as well!

And P.S., I don't see how putting SW equipment in FW, even if it's not that clean, can hurt when you are putting it into a tank of this volume...I mean, what could be toxic about it?

 

[Bortass]

boil your driftwood. Did you test your water to see if any of the normal parameters had change? Maybe the SW equipment was not that clean at all. Did you boil it to disinfect? maybe you can post pics or any distinguishing mark on your fish.

I don't test my water, never have. I'm not saying that this is wise or anything, it's just the way I've managed the tank over the years.

I have no pictures. I already buried the fish in the yard. They were too big for a burial at sea. There were no marks on the fish. The clown loaches were dull and the largest one had a greyish tinge to it.

I didn't boil any of the gear. I rinsed and scrubbed it off in freshwater. I didn't get everything 100% spotless and really didn't think that whatever was not removed would affect a tank this large but it was probably close to a tipping point and I pushed it over.

 

[platytudes]

Boiling the driftwood will probably work, you can also just give it a good rinse and scrub in a briny solution or about 25% hydrogen peroxide and 75% water. Not as stinky as the smell of driftwood soup. Once you do either method, let it sit in the sun. The only issue is that it may cease to become waterlogged after that (unless it is self sinking wood, like Mopani)

Do try and get into the habit of testing your tank about once a month, at least, twice would be better. A good time to test it is before water change day. Since it sounds like you had a low bioload for that tank (unless the clown loaches were monster sized) you may have slacked on water changes. I know there are people who have gone as long as 6 months without them.

While things may seem fine, it creates the "tipping point" situation you speak of. The "dirtyness" of the tank was probably just the pleco eating wood...these wood chips, so to speak, are very fibrous and obvious looking, but not really harmful to the water quality much. Definitely not like a carnivore's waste.

What kind of filtration did you have before you switched to DIY wet dry?

 

[Bortass]

It sounds very strange...did you check the water, do you have water test results? Perhaps a pH crash or an ammonia spike? A sudden increase in pH can make ammonia much more deadly.

I don't see why a 16" pleco couldn't send any tank into havoc, that's a lot of dead rotting fish! How far along was his decomposition, though?

What do the fish look like? Just dead?

Gas pockets are pretty rare in actual practice - do you have gravel or sand?

Did you add anything to the tank such as a pH buffer, sludge remover, etc. when you were sprucing it up? Have you checked your dechlorinator for expiration date, etc.?

Sorry to keep babbling. Just saying anything that comes to mind.

I'm sure you feel awful about this and honestly, I don't see that you did anything blatantly wrong at all. Maybe it will jump out at someone else.

My deepest condolences as well!

And P.S., I don't see how putting SW equipment in FW, even if it's not that clean, can hurt when you are putting it into a tank of this volume...I mean, what could be toxic about it?

The pleco was alive last night before I added the new gear to the tank. The only thing I added was more water and some of it was RO. The RO was maybe 3 gallons though.

The filter pad had been sitting in the basement for quite awhile though. My tanks are down there as well but maybe it picked up something from the air?

Now the pleco did act weird. I had setup just the overflow and w/d setup around 6 PM. I started it up and ran it for a few minutes without the filter pad. I wanted to make sure the water would flow through the DIY filter. The pleco kinda freaked. It's done that in the past, where it'll be sitting there and it gets agitated and swims away real fast. It kinda acted like that but didn't swim away.

I added the filter pad and ran it for 15 minutes. I was leaving for a few hours so I shut it down.

I added the SEIO around 9:30 last night. I noticed 1 cherry barb was starting at act as a floater but figured it was just normal causes. It had been in the tank for a few years. The clown loaches were acting normal as were the corys. Nothing was lurking at the surface gasping.

Now, here's something odd but likely unrelated. We use propane to heat the house. So I have a propane heater in the basement. Next to that I have a gas detector. This is within 6 feet of the tank. The heater had been on low since the previous night. The fan on the heater kicked on as it was switching on a minute or 2 after I restarted the w/d and the gas alarm went off. I turned off the heater and the alarm stopped. I also shut off the propane line outside.

The alarm has been quiet since. The propane heater has been in place for over a year and the gas line has been on the entire time.

The tank water was warm, so it's not like the lack of heat in the basement was a cause. I have a heater in it and my basement does get some heat from the rest of the house, so it's normally in the low 60s this time of year.

The tank water itself seems to smell ok.

 

[lookit]

I'm so sorry for your calamity!

 

[platytudes]

Hmm, I don't know about gas, but that does sound fishy...

(sorry, no pun intended!)

 

[Bortass]

Ok, I turned on the basement heater and all is good. The gas/carbon monoxide detector is quiet. So I'm thinking that whatever set it off was transient in nature.

I checked the PH 7.4 and ammonia 0.