DAY 57 — Had to rescue the QT tank today. We just couldn’t get the cloudiness under control with normal/heavy water changes and I feared a bacterial bloom was overtaking the tank. Furthermore the yellow watchman goby had starting showing signs of ammonia burn (or something like it) with the red gills. Maybe it was an ammonia spike; maybe it was oxygen deprivation due to the cloud. I don’t know but I didn’t want to dance around it anymore.
On top of all that, I realized I had made a mistake over the last week when dosing Prazipro. I had thrown carbon in the filter after 30 days of copper to get all the copper out of the system. But I neglected to take it out when I did my first, and second, Prazipro doses. So I cannot count on any of the Prazipro meds benefitting the tank, while at the same time dealing with the adverse effect of the oxygen-binding liquid in Prazipro probably causing my cloudy issues.
Right. On with the rescue.
I had 4 gal of new water mixed up overnight. I dumped that in a 5 gal, tall bucket and added a heater and an airline to start getting it warm and oxygenated. I immediately mixed up another 4 gal in another bucket to have on hand.
After 30-60 mins of letting the new water get oxygenated and making sure the temp matched my QT closely, we started the process of moving the fish out. First we drained about 4 gallons out of the QT. Then we caught all of the fish and transported them to the waiting bucket. We had pulled all of their hiding pipes from the QT, cleaned them, and then placed a couple in the waiting bucket for them to hide in/under/behind.
Once all of the fish were in their temporary home, we proceeded to drain the rest of the QT tank completely. We scrubbed it down, rinsed it, scrubbed it again, repeat, repeat, repeat. And we did the same with all of its components. Everything got pulled out, pulled apart and scrubbed down. Power heads, impellers, heater, suction cups, filters, you name it.
With the tank crystal clear and sparkling clean, we commenced to setting it all back up. First, I used the tank itself as a mixing vessel, putting 6 gal of fresh water in there and mixing my salt with the aid of two power heads causing turbulence. While this was mixing I got the filter reconstructed, gingerly siphoned some water into it to cover the ceramic media rocks and then poured a whole 2 oz. bottle of Dr. Tim’s Nitrifying Bacteria onto them and let that sit for awhile (over an hour I think).
Meanwhile, the only issue I had left before reintroducing the fish into the QT was that the water was too warm. At first I thought I could vent the lid and let it cool down on its own, but that proved to take forever. I then got the idea to — PRO TIP — fill a Solo cup with ice cubes and hold the cup in the circulating water. This would cool the water down without diluting it as it would have had I just thrown ice cubes in the water. And it didn’t take long either. I was able to drop the temp ~3°F in probably 20-30 mins. If that. Every couple of minutes my thermometer would drop 0.2°F. It was a short enough period of time that I could tolerate standing in one spot holding my arm over the tank to keep the cup of ice upright. Also, it took me 2 cups of ice to accomplish this. The first cup melted to the point where only a few cubes remained floating at the top. The second cup was definitely watery. Probably half-melted. This technique helped immensely. And once I got the temp down to my desired range I safely put the fish back in, using their own water from the temporary bucket to fill the rest of the QT up.
And that’s where we are at this point. Count me as a nay on the Prazipro. I have General Cure coming early next week. The Prazipro can go in the trash for all I'm concerned. In the meantime, we’re going to take these next few days to observe everyone and make sure they are eating and returning to normal. I’m worried about the goby, but hopeful that improving the quality of the water will nurse it back to health.
And when the GC comes, I will be sure to pull the carbon from the tank, do my 2 doses and then be done (hopefully) with QT and start transferring fish to the DT.
