Lilnoelle80
Community Member
This morning, I noticed that all of my fish were breathing heavily and laying in my sand bed. I have a 210 FOWLR aquarium that had been doing well except for some cyano and hair algae issues. No diseased fish, no recent losses, no recent additions. I do a strict medicated quarantine for any new additions since the last time I had ich issues and had to fallow the tank a year ago. As I said, no diseases in the tank recently and no new additions.
One recent change was the addition of an algae scrubber in my sump, that led me down the path of unhooking the sump and redoing the plumbing, last night I made another adjustment, adding a small tank as a refugium under my stand and plumbing a manifold, and turned off the sump again overnight as I had to wait to pick up a part and couldn’t finish. At some point, before I went to bed, I put a new heater in the sump on a temp controller, but had to unplug my apex and when I plugged it back in, some of the equipment seemed to “surge” but then was working ok, and I didn’t think anything of it (kicking myself for this now, seems so idiotic)… unfortunately my voltage grounding cable is in the sump…
Flash forward to today: I quickly took my fish and rock out and put in three large tubs, putting about half new saltwater in with tank water, treated with safe, euthanasia bubbler, temp controller, powerhead in each tub.
I felt pretty sure that this was electrical, but I’m not 100%, so I emptied the tank and am mixing new saltwater. This whole process has taken some time, and at this point in time, the sand bed (not particularly deep) and the water covering it has cooled. So now I’m trying to decide on how to proceed without ending up with a cycle/ammonia spike when I put everything back in.
I currently don’t have any ammonia in the tank from when I tested my water.
Would it be sufficient to just add water back in and then the rock? Maybe throw in some bottled bacteria for good measure?
Do I need to keep my fish out of the system for the next few days, to watch their behavior and prevent fish from dying in my system (unseen) and cause an ammonia issue as a result?
I had two losses, both hawkfish, and a sixbar angel and puffer fish that look sickly. The others seem to be doing much better than when I took them out.
I have at least one starfish and 3 urchins that haven’t moved since I put them in the tubs, so I don’t know if they are still alive.
One recent change was the addition of an algae scrubber in my sump, that led me down the path of unhooking the sump and redoing the plumbing, last night I made another adjustment, adding a small tank as a refugium under my stand and plumbing a manifold, and turned off the sump again overnight as I had to wait to pick up a part and couldn’t finish. At some point, before I went to bed, I put a new heater in the sump on a temp controller, but had to unplug my apex and when I plugged it back in, some of the equipment seemed to “surge” but then was working ok, and I didn’t think anything of it (kicking myself for this now, seems so idiotic)… unfortunately my voltage grounding cable is in the sump…
Flash forward to today: I quickly took my fish and rock out and put in three large tubs, putting about half new saltwater in with tank water, treated with safe, euthanasia bubbler, temp controller, powerhead in each tub.
I felt pretty sure that this was electrical, but I’m not 100%, so I emptied the tank and am mixing new saltwater. This whole process has taken some time, and at this point in time, the sand bed (not particularly deep) and the water covering it has cooled. So now I’m trying to decide on how to proceed without ending up with a cycle/ammonia spike when I put everything back in.
I currently don’t have any ammonia in the tank from when I tested my water.
Would it be sufficient to just add water back in and then the rock? Maybe throw in some bottled bacteria for good measure?
Do I need to keep my fish out of the system for the next few days, to watch their behavior and prevent fish from dying in my system (unseen) and cause an ammonia issue as a result?
I had two losses, both hawkfish, and a sixbar angel and puffer fish that look sickly. The others seem to be doing much better than when I took them out.
I have at least one starfish and 3 urchins that haven’t moved since I put them in the tubs, so I don’t know if they are still alive.
sorry about yourtank friends
