How nice to see your healthy critters & that you have a plan for eventually with this tank. I'm sure it will be wonderful again...but I'm glad I don't have to wash tanks in the bathtub anymore, lol
My tanks
- Thread starter NoodleCats
- Start date
I pray I never have to do that with my 135
I think I'd cry. But, 2nd floor apartment unit, I don't have many options as to where to clean them if I have to. A 55g though I think is my limit to solo cleaning that way. Anything bigger I don't think I can lift anymore with my joints.
Back up plan is hose to refill, and drain repeatedly and dry out very very well lol
But removing it from the dresser gave me a good opportunity to clean behind it and gather anything that fell behind there lol I found a bag of algae wafers, bonus.
Well, algae wafers are better than we found behind a tank many years ago before we moved . We had MIA giant danios back there we thought the big cichlids ate...somehow it seemed more sad that they jumped out...
Yeah, I did the big tank hose & clean on my 5ft 110g? Double thick glass, even the 2 of us couldn't move it anymore (lame old folks, sigh, but not likely in our younger days either). It's exactly where we had the movers put it 12 years ago...
. We had MIA giant danios back there we thought the big cichlids ate...somehow it seemed more sad that they jumped out...Yeah, I did the big tank hose & clean on my 5ft 110g? Double thick glass, even the 2 of us couldn't move it anymore (lame old folks, sigh, but not likely in our younger days either). It's exactly where we had the movers put it 12 years ago...
Oof, jumpers. Yeah jumped fish make me sad too, because it's like the equivalent of us drowning and to me it feels worse than just being eaten quick, you know? So I can totally understand how that'd be more sad.Well, algae wafers are better than we found behind a tank many years ago before we moved
Yeah, I did the big tank hose & clean on my 5ft 110g? Double thick glass, even the 2 of us couldn't move it anymore (lame old folks, sigh, but not likely in our younger days either). It's exactly where we had the movers put it 12 years ago...
I found an assortment of other things, but luckily nothing dead back there. Found the end piece of a gravel vac, the wafers, a couple pipettes, a bowl of dried duckweed (I don't even know), and a couple of the clips for the canister hose attachments lol at some point duckweed got onto the wall too.
I'm not old, but I've had osteoarthritis in all my major joints from a young age, diagnosed at age 20. Lifting isn't always easy. I needed to sit down for awhile afterwards lol.
But I'm still working through all the teardown. Doing a little every day. Have all the plants sitting in a bucket, been bleach dipped. Some have already been distributed to the other tanks after they've been sanitized. Some are going to be reused in the new setup, but are chilling in a bucket until then. The rocks have all been baked in the oven. All the wood was thrown out.
Still need to lug the bucket of sand outside and dump it. But it's really heavy, so I've been procrastinating on that one, kinda hoping to catch my husband on one of his days off work to help with that one.
A regular treasure trove back there! I have duckweed on a wall too Maybe we can start a home design craze, sort of textured walls & a nature theme all at once! With bowls of duckweed centerpieces for continuity...It'd be nice if we could think of a room decorative use for java moss too, dead or alive
I have to do less water or substrate per bucket. It's hard to remember when I just need to vacuum out a bit more crud & then can't carry it far. No stairs though...I remember your pics of your 135? being carried up lots of steps.
Little by little is a good way to do it. It's a huge, sad job. If it gets to be too much you can quit for a while. Except for the bathtub part, you kinda just have to power through that to get to a stopping & able to shower point.
What bleach ratio are you using for your plants? I used to do 20:1 water to bleach but I did kill more than a few plants. Peroxide wasn't much better but I don't recall the routine. & those were just on the "off chance" of bringing something home, not from a tank I knew had major problems. It's sad about your wood too. I have bleached &/or baked it but when in doubt I've tossed it too. After my mycobacteria QT "incident" I tossed the filter & tank contents, bleached & dried out the tank for more than a year...& then gave it away to someone who wasn't going to keep animals in it. Overly paranoid? Yep, maybe, or just safer? I have no regrets.
Maybe we can start a home design craze, sort of textured walls & a nature theme all at once! With bowls of duckweed centerpieces for continuity...It'd be nice if we could think of a room decorative use for java moss too, dead or alive I have to do less water or substrate per bucket. It's hard to remember when I just need to vacuum out a bit more crud & then can't carry it far. No stairs though...I remember your pics of your 135? being carried up lots of steps.
Little by little is a good way to do it. It's a huge, sad job. If it gets to be too much you can quit for a while. Except for the bathtub part, you kinda just have to power through that to get to a stopping & able to shower point.
What bleach ratio are you using for your plants? I used to do 20:1 water to bleach but I did kill more than a few plants. Peroxide wasn't much better but I don't recall the routine. & those were just on the "off chance" of bringing something home, not from a tank I knew had major problems. It's sad about your wood too. I have bleached &/or baked it but when in doubt I've tossed it too. After my mycobacteria QT "incident" I tossed the filter & tank contents, bleached & dried out the tank for more than a year...& then gave it away to someone who wasn't going to keep animals in it. Overly paranoid? Yep, maybe, or just safer? I have no regrets.
I usually do 1 part bleach to 10 parts water, granted many plants don't survive, but it's safer than risking my other fish. Another option for the plants that don't take bleach well, I'll grow emersed for awhile and readd it later and let it adapt all over again. Mosses are good for this option.A regular treasure trove back there! I have duckweed on a wall too
I have to do less water or substrate per bucket. It's hard to remember when I just need to vacuum out a bit more crud & then can't carry it far. No stairs though...I remember your pics of your 135? being carried up lots of steps.
Little by little is a good way to do it. It's a huge, sad job. If it gets to be too much you can quit for a while. Except for the bathtub part, you kinda just have to power through that to get to a stopping & able to shower point.
What bleach ratio are you using for your plants? I used to do 20:1 water to bleach but I did kill more than a few plants. Peroxide wasn't much better but I don't recall the routine. & those were just on the "off chance" of bringing something home, not from a tank I knew had major problems. It's sad about your wood too. I have bleached &/or baked it but when in doubt I've tossed it too. After my mycobacteria QT "incident" I tossed the filter & tank contents, bleached & dried out the tank for more than a year...& then gave it away to someone who wasn't going to keep animals in it. Overly paranoid? Yep, maybe, or just safer? I have no regrets.
I could have baked some of the wood. But the best piece was too big to bake and frankly would have been a pain in the butt to resubmerge again. Not worth the hassle.
I do already have new wood, I collected some and it's been baked or had boiling water poured onto it and then dried. So sterilized and ready to go.
Bought more play sand today, plan to rinse it this weekend. Not looking forward to that part. Wish me luck lol. I did look at pool filter sand, had two options for it:
The smaller grained bright white kind. Don't like bright white substrate--washes the fish colours unnaturally.
Or
Larger grained natural pool filter sand. I looked at this in person, it was larger grained than I liked and rough. More like a fine gravel. No good for corydoras sifting.
So I passed up on those and went to my usual super fine play sand lol. Hate the work, but anything for my cories is worth it.
Oh. Some solace to all of this. Two weeks before this whole mess I cleaned out guppy grass from the tank, and there were cory eggs in it. I moved those to a nursery where they hatched. They should be parasite free, as I'm fairly sure camallanus life cycle doesn't affect eggs. I don't know what species they are, but they're babies from the fish I lost.
I lean towards paleatus though, they give me paleatus vibes. Too soon to be 100% certain though.
Baby cories are a silver lining to all your troubles! So cute whatever they turn out to be. How many fry did you get?
10:1 bleach, wow! You are a brave woman. Are you talking a brief submerge & rinse? I think I did 3-5 minutes soak, with maybe a very brief root dunk? Plants like java fern, anubias (probably bucephalandra too, if they were available back then) tended to survive better than thin stem plant leaves. Crypt leaves melted of course but roots often lived to grow again. Most ferns would likely survive too. But again, I wasn't dealing with a resistant parasite or disease.
As I recall peroxide was supposed to be more "gentle" for "just in case" plant diseases but I think I got distracted & soaked them too long. Now plants from my club I just rinse for a minute in running chlorinated tap water...again, not dealing with disease.
It sounds like you're well on your way to recovering from this tank disaster! Go NoodleCats, go Cass!
10:1 bleach, wow! You are a brave woman. Are you talking a brief submerge & rinse? I think I did 3-5 minutes soak, with maybe a very brief root dunk? Plants like java fern, anubias (probably bucephalandra too, if they were available back then) tended to survive better than thin stem plant leaves. Crypt leaves melted of course but roots often lived to grow again. Most ferns would likely survive too. But again, I wasn't dealing with a resistant parasite or disease.
As I recall peroxide was supposed to be more "gentle" for "just in case" plant diseases but I think I got distracted & soaked them too long. Now plants from my club I just rinse for a minute in running chlorinated tap water...again, not dealing with disease.
It sounds like you're well on your way to recovering from this tank disaster! Go NoodleCats, go Cass!
I haven't got a full count, less than 20 though. They dart around too much to count in the nursery.
I do the quick dip method. BUT I've also been keeping the plants sitting in straight tap as well afterwards, so some prolonged chlorine there. They're just chilling in a bucket.
Over the next day or two, I should be getting them into the new setup (expect a new thread for that once I'm ready to post it)
I have been bleach dipping plants for over 20 years. From day one I have always use a 19-1 mix of water to bleach. Anything more can tend to kill plants. Different plants will react differently. I am usually doing it to get rid of algae. I dip for 90 seconds, The I rinse with tap water. OI have a private well and never need to use dechlor. But the chlorine content of taps for the rinse phase will be much lower than the dipping mix.
Next the plant gets dropped into a bucket with an overdose of dechlor. I keep it on hand for this purpose and for when I go to weekend events and will need to dechlor the hotel water. From there the plants go back into the tank.
Some plants cannot be dipped at all and some need a shorter dip or they may die/ It is usually the plants with the finer leaves that tend to do poorly when dipped. I could not dip water sprite for example.
As for how to clean big tanks- I was barely 5'5" tall at my peak. Now 75 years of gravity and the loss of a spinal disk and am barely over 5'3". A few years back I had a plan to upgrade and inwall 75 housing my clown cloaches to a 6 foot tank. I bought a 150 and a 125 used and had them carried by some very big guys onto their stands. But they were filthy and until I was ready to make the move, I did nothing, And then one Sunday morning the in wall 75 started to leak out of the bottom right corner and I needed to make the 150 gal. usable for move everything into fairly fast.
I had to thoroughly cleaned the 150 ASAP. So here is what I did, I filled the tank about 1/2 way and then dumped in a bunch of Oxy-Clean, I wan several pumps to circulate and had another hooked to a short hose. I used this to pump the water all over the glass not under water. I should mention that I have an assortment of pumps and hoses I can run up to 100+ ft. if needed.
To rinse the tank I put in a pump to empty and then I used another one to be rinsing the glass and get pumped out. It took me a couple of hours, but the tank ended up clean and well rinsed. It took the better part of the rest of the day into the next one to get all the fish, substrate and plants out of the 75 and into the 150. Of course, I had to add more substrate, rocks and wood than what was in the 75.
I cannot lift anything bigger than a 29 gal tank on my own. I can move them around on the floor using a hand truck. But I need big help to get things onto and off of stands. So I have been forced to find other ways to do some things in place. Tanks are much easier to clean out side, but necessity is the mother of invention....
For you and me, Cass....
Next the plant gets dropped into a bucket with an overdose of dechlor. I keep it on hand for this purpose and for when I go to weekend events and will need to dechlor the hotel water. From there the plants go back into the tank.
Some plants cannot be dipped at all and some need a shorter dip or they may die/ It is usually the plants with the finer leaves that tend to do poorly when dipped. I could not dip water sprite for example.
As for how to clean big tanks- I was barely 5'5" tall at my peak. Now 75 years of gravity and the loss of a spinal disk and am barely over 5'3". A few years back I had a plan to upgrade and inwall 75 housing my clown cloaches to a 6 foot tank. I bought a 150 and a 125 used and had them carried by some very big guys onto their stands. But they were filthy and until I was ready to make the move, I did nothing, And then one Sunday morning the in wall 75 started to leak out of the bottom right corner and I needed to make the 150 gal. usable for move everything into fairly fast.
I had to thoroughly cleaned the 150 ASAP. So here is what I did, I filled the tank about 1/2 way and then dumped in a bunch of Oxy-Clean, I wan several pumps to circulate and had another hooked to a short hose. I used this to pump the water all over the glass not under water. I should mention that I have an assortment of pumps and hoses I can run up to 100+ ft. if needed.
To rinse the tank I put in a pump to empty and then I used another one to be rinsing the glass and get pumped out. It took me a couple of hours, but the tank ended up clean and well rinsed. It took the better part of the rest of the day into the next one to get all the fish, substrate and plants out of the 75 and into the 150. Of course, I had to add more substrate, rocks and wood than what was in the 75.
I cannot lift anything bigger than a 29 gal tank on my own. I can move them around on the floor using a hand truck. But I need big help to get things onto and off of stands. So I have been forced to find other ways to do some things in place. Tanks are much easier to clean out side, but necessity is the mother of invention....
For you and me, Cass....
Yeah, the quick dip and heavy dechlorinator method is my usual dip method, except this time I just placed in tap water after the bleach dip for awhile before heavily dechlorinating. Anything I couldn't bleach dip (flame moss, weeping moss, Christmas moss) I put in a zip lock bag without water. Stem plants like the hygrophila and hydrocolotyle I'm going to put in a dirt bin and grow them emersed, and use the emersed trimmings in the future.
I'm a whole 5 foot exact, so carrying a 4 foot tank is hilariously awkward.
