Hyde

Yeek! They were all thriving. It’s heartbreaking.

Valid points. I think the whole experience has made me jumpy about anything being a culprit. It’s going to be a while before I am in a place to buy new things for it. Currently I’m in school and we all know how expensive life is right now. I’ll follow your advise and go from there, thank you!

Thank you all for your compassion and insight. The wood is so big it’s in the bathtub, I’ll keep rinsing and soaking. I don’t know if I should add dechlorinator to the tub but I think I will. The plants I’ll set up a nursery tank for with water from my other tanks water changes. the rocks can be boiled so I’ll do that and clean the tank several times, I think I’ll replace the substrate just to go the extra mile, I can’t deal with the fear of that poison resting there and undoing all the clean-up efforts. As for activated carbon I have a bin of it, as well as a purigen pillow. I'm not clear on if I should scrub out the filter and replace the biomedia stones, but I may do that too. I should ( I hope) have enough good bacteria to pull from the existing tanks to kickstart a new cycle when I get this all in place. On a somewhat positive note the corys and the Otto are zooming around in the smaller tanks. So far they seem to be ok. Thank you everyone. I’m very grateful for the time you took to advise me.

I have an air bubble hose in the tank as well as an air stone so there’s aeration the length of it. I had been trying to get a peace lily transferred from soil to adapt to water and I still hadn’t figured out how to set it in place with only roots in the water, but after this I’m going to be side-eyeing plants and I’m not sure I’ll ever set it up. Slug pesticide is something I’ve never known about, yeesh!

Oh yeah it’s a vevor external canister filter, 6 stages with ultraviolet cycle 660 gph. The toxic nightmare is probably all through it as well.

We got a weird frost warning ( June) and my mom wanted the patio plants brought in overnight. We have cats that eat plants so it got put on the top of the tank. During the night it tipped into the tank and I woke up to 4 flasher barbs, 2 dwarf rainbows, 2 balloon rams, 2 little loaches and 2 Siamese algae eaters dead. The three angels followed suit, then the remaining rams and all but 1 rainbow. I pulled it out immediately, too late. Netted my lost fish and did a 50% water change with double dose of prime. I believe it’s something in the soil, the plant was a gifted creeping Jenny fern. all that remains ( so far) is the Cory’s and the Otto. I’ve removed them to my other tanks. nothing was amiss with the api kit. Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 20 ppm, ph 7.6, temperate steady at 79. Our water is always hard but they were all just fine until a stupid gifted plant had to be saved from frost. The tank is just sitting there like some harbinger of doom at the moment. I’ve pulled all the wood and put it in a full bath, it’s too large to boil. I’m devastated. Question, whatever was in the plant is obviously poisonous to fish. can I safely decontaminate the wood and plants? At the moment I cannot even begin to redo anything. I’m feel like a monster having tried to save them and just watching helplessly as they continued to die. Nothing showed up on the tests that would result in any of this. A week ago it was thriving and I’ve been hoping against hope that the water change would let the fish recover. The last few days have been awful. I’m trying to think of it as a lesson but this is a hard one. I’m assuming it would be wise to replace the substrate and thoroughly clean the tank, empty, start over. I’ve got hundreds invested in plants and wood and I’m just wondering if anyone has experience with this? Can anything be salvaged? I’m hoping the last few fish manage to evade water this is. My mom is 90 and feels awful about it, and I don’t want to make her feel worse, so having anything positive for a course of action would be helpful. Thanks in advance.