I effed up but how bad? Canister filter shut off for 23h

[mgudyka]

Well you guys, I done messed up. I seeded my new tank's filter on my cycled tank for four weeks. I transferred and installed the filter outlet and inlets in the tank. I installed the canister in the cabinet beneath the tank. I spent a couple hours acclimating my fish to my water. Everything is awesome, right?

 

Well in the transfer from cycled tank to new, I shut the valve when I moved it over so the water from the canister wouldn't spill. I never opened the valve back up. So from Saturday 8pm to today at 7pm, the filter has been plugged in but no water flowing through it.

How big did I eff up here? Are all my bacteria just dead? I am devastated at my own stupidity. I only have 5 fish in this 75 gallon (2 small electric blue acaras, two 8 ish inch rope fish, and one marble sailfin pleco). 

What do?

[therealTruthSeeker]

They could still be alive. To be safe if it were me I  would Test a lot looking for ammonia. Run some ammonia blocking water conditioner like seachem prime just in case you have some quick ammonia spikes and maybe to be safe add a bacteria starter like fritz zyme 7. But a lot of bacteria is on aquarium surfaces and substrate so I think you are pretty safe.  Hope all turns out well.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Brian007

[Solidus1833]

One time when I was doing maintenance on my Fx4, I forgot to close the valve when I unplugged it from the cannister. lol. the WIFE WAS NOT HAPPY!

Honestly, You may be ok. Most of the beneficial bacteria in the aquarium was still present. If you want to be cautious, just put a dose of Stability or the equivalent in the aquarium. I've actually made a similar mistake and ran my cannister with the valves closed as-well for an hour trying to figure out why I had zero flow. Good thing is, if your cannister is still working, you may have gotten away with not damaging the pump. I think you will be ok. 

 

[mgudyka]

4 minutes ago, Brian007 said:

They could still be alive. To be safe if it were me I  would Test a lot looking for ammonia. Run some ammonia blocking water conditioner like seachem prime just in case you have some quick ammonia spikes and maybe to be safe add a bacteria starter like fritz zyme 7.

That is a great idea.  I forgot i had fritz zyme 7 (bought it when I started seeding this filter) so I have added it. I did a water change and treated with fritz ACCR. Thank you for the input. 

[DShelton]

You are likely still fine. How big, volume wise, is the canister?

Were I in your situation I would do the following:

• not panic
• take some substrate from your other tank and swap it into the new tank (most of your bacteria load in an established tank is usually in the substate)
• test the tank water for ammonia and pH
• vent the canister
• change the water in it the canister with clean tank water 
• start the canister
• watch the water chemistry to see what it does.

I would absolutely never ever ever overdose with prime (or any other dechlorinator for that matter) because all they do is dechlorinate. They have nothing in them to 'detoxify' ammonia.

I would dose some FZyme7 if i had it on hand, but would not go out of my way to get it. Mostly I would 'wait and see' what my water chemistry does after I did the above.

 

 

[mgudyka]

8 minutes ago, Solidus1833 said:

One time when I was doing maintenance on my Fx4, I forgot to close the valve when I unplugged it from the cannister. lol. the WIFE WAS NOT HAPPY!

Honestly, You may be ok. Most of the beneficial bacteria in the aquarium was still present. If you want to be cautious, just put a dose of Stability or the equivalent in the aquarium. I've actually made a similar mistake and ran my cannister with the valves closed as-well for an hour trying to figure out why I had zero flow. Good thing is, if your cannister is still working, you may have gotten away with not damaging the pump. I think you will be ok. 

 

Well this is a brand new tank that I installed a seeded filter onto but never ran for 48 hours.  If I do have any saving grace, the bacteria was kept wet the whole time. The filter is still running thankfully

[mgudyka]

1 minute ago, DShelton said:

You are likely still fine. How big, volume wise, is the canister?

Were I in your situation I would do the following:

• not panic
• take some substrate from your other tank and swap it into the new tank (most of your bacteria load in an established tank is usually in the substate)
• test the tank water for ammonia and pH
• vent the canister
• change the water in it the canister with clean tank water 
• start the canister
• watch the water chemistry to see what it does.

I would absolutely never ever ever overdose with prime (or any other dechlorinator for that matter) because all they do is dechlorinate. They have nothing in them to 'detoxify' ammonia.

I would dose some FZyme7 if i had it on hand, but would not go out of my way to get it. Mostly I would 'wait and see' what my water chemistry does after I did the above.

 

 

I did have the fritz zyme on hand and I performed a water change after the filter was up and running for a little. I will test my water and swap some substrate from my established tank. I have a fluval 306

[Wingman12r]

You'll likely be fine. 

I turn off my canister when I feed BBS. A month or 2 ago I forgot to turn it back on and didn't notice untill the following evening. I plugged it back in and never noticed a difference.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Wingman12r

[DShelton]

2 minutes ago, mgudyka said:

I did have the fritz zyme on hand and I performed a water change after the filter was up and running for a little. I will test my water and swap some substrate from my established tank. I have a fluval 306

That is a great course of action.

[tonyjuliano]

I can almost guarantee you will be just fine.

very unlikely that you lost much of that hard earned beneficial bacteria.

[mgudyka]

28 minutes ago, Wingman12r said:

You'll likely be fine. 

I turn off my canister when I feed BBS. A month or 2 ago I forgot to turn it back on and didn't notice untill the following evening. I plugged it back in and never noticed a difference.

I hope so! Thank you very the input 

[mgudyka]

15 minutes ago, tonyjuliano said:

I can almost guarantee you will be just fine.

very unlikely that you lost much of that hard earned beneficial bacteria.

That was my biggest concern. Four weeks of seeding!!!

[mgudyka]

35 minutes ago, DShelton said:

That is a great course of action.

Thank You friend

[RockMongler]

10 hours ago, DShelton said:

I would absolutely never ever ever overdose with prime (or any other dechlorinator for that matter) because all they do is dechlorinate. They have nothing in them to 'detoxify' ammonia.

That is not true.  Many products people use for dechlorinators aren't just dechlorinators.  You only really need a little bit of sodium thiosulfate to detoxify chlorine, and you can get tiny bottles of sodium thiosulfate solutions that can treat huge amounts of water.  Many also have EDTA, an acid that does a good job of grabbing heavy metals out of solution, which is useful even in non-chlorinated well water, as it binds metals like copper, lead, and cobalt.  

Things like API Stresscoat and Seachem Prime are dechlorinators, mixed in with others stuff to do more than just remove chlorine compounds (Chlorine gas and Chloramine).  Both companies also sell just plain ol' pure dechlorinators, at a lower price point, and in a much more concentrated form.  Most of the time, the extra stuff is probably unnecessary (ie: stress coat has aloe vera to help with keeping fish slime coats at their best), but they do have more chemicals in them than just something to detoxify chlorine.  There are plenty of people online willing to speak in support of Prime helping with nitrogenous waste, even if the help is a little bit of regular sodium chloride salt* reducing its toxicity on fish while BB do their job.  You could probably recreate the effects on your own by mixing up your own raw sodium thiosulfate with other various additives, but most people want a ready to go, easy fix solution to dump into their water during water changes.

Prime is probably overkill, but it's extra ingredients can be useful to keep things chemically safe until BB can take over detoxifying nitrogenous waste.  The only big problem I would see with excess use of dechlorinators is an increased use of oxygen in the tank** as the chemicals do their thing.   So, as Cory always says, put an airstone in your tank!  Airstones are like magic, and their possible downsides are far outweighed by their massive upsides.  

So, no.  Unless you are just using a pure sodium thiosulfate solution to treat your water, the stuff you mix in does more than just remove chlorine/chloramine, and the fancy proprietary cocktails sold by API/Seachem do have more in them than just chlorine treatments.  However, I would also only dose according to the label, and Seachem Prime does have instructions for doing so under certain conditions.  

*Remember, chlorine in your tap water is Cl2, chlorine gas dissolved in water.  It does a good job of murdering living things, like bacteria we don't want in our drinking water.  Chloramine is trickier because its a bigger compound made by adding ammonia to the chlorinated water, so you get a something like NH2Cl that is also excellent at murdering living things (it's what you get when you mix bleach and ammonia). The chlorine going into your tank with Sodium Chloride is Cl-, Chloride, the chlorine ion, which is far less hazardous to living things.  In fact, we eat it on a daily basis, and it's a critical part of our body chemistry.

**This also goes for when you medicate your tank.  Many chemical reactions in our aquaria suck up oxygen (ex: NH3 -> NO2 and NO2 -> NO3). Use airstones!

[therealTruthSeeker]

11 hours ago, DShelton said:

You are likely still fine. How big, volume wise, is the canister?

Were I in your situation I would do the following:

• not panic
• take some substrate from your other tank and swap it into the new tank (most of your bacteria load in an established tank is usually in the substate)
• test the tank water for ammonia and pH
• vent the canister
• change the water in it the canister with clean tank water 
• start the canister
• watch the water chemistry to see what it does.

I would absolutely never ever ever overdose with prime (or any other dechlorinator for that matter) because all they do is dechlorinate. They have nothing in them to 'detoxify' ammonia.

I would dose some FZyme7 if i had it on hand, but would not go out of my way to get it. Mostly I would 'wait and see' what my water chemistry does after I did the above.

 

 

Prime does bind ammonia into a safer form for 24 hrs. Ive saved fish this way. So has ben ochart and kg tropicals. It says so on the bottle of prime also. Don't need to over dose it. Just treat tank volume every 24 to 48 hrs. It isn't perfect but it will save your fish if you have quick ammonia spike at midnight when you aren't watching it.

[DShelton]

3 hours ago, Brian007 said:

Prime does bind ammonia into a safer form for 24 hrs. Ive saved fish this way. So has ben ochart and kg tropicals. It says so on the bottle of prime also. Don't need to over dose it. Just treat tank volume every 24 to 48 hrs. It isn't perfect but it will save your fish if you have quick ammonia spike at midnight when you aren't watching it.

It is chemically impossible for that to happen, prime is a reducing agent (that is how it dechlorinates). The only way to make ammonia non-toxic, beyond taking it out of the aquarium is to oxidize it to nitrite and then to nitrate. There is nothing in prime that can do that. What is written on the bottle is marketing garbage.

More than likely the pH of your aquarium is low enough (< 8.5 or so) that most of the "ammonia" that is being registered by your test kit is really ammonium (far far far less toxic than ammonia) instead of free ammonia.

[Solidus1833]

16 minutes ago, DShelton said:

It is chemically impossible for that to happen, prime is a reducing agent (that is how it dechlorinates). The only way to make ammonia non-toxic, beyond taking it out of the aquarium is to oxidize it to nitrite and then to nitrate. There is nothing in prime that can do that. What is written on the bottle is marketing garbage.

More than likely the pH of your aquarium is low enough (< 8.5 or so) that most of the "ammonia" that is being registered by your test kit is really ammonium (far far far less toxic than ammonia) instead of free ammonia.

I'm not sure what you mean here about a reducing agent because dechlorinates like Prime 'do' bind ammonia 'detoxifying' it so the aquarium can cycle it with the beneficial bacteria. I myself have done this most recently after the Texas freeze when my municipality was dosing our water table with ammonia after all of the damage. I could not recover my aquariums with water changes as I was dumping 2.0ppm ammonia directly from the tap. Using Prime to bind so my BB can catch up after a week of not running. Plants took care of the rest taking about 30hrs to eat up 1.5ppm. 

 

[tonyjuliano]

19 minutes ago, DShelton said:

It is chemically impossible for that to happen, prime is a reducing agent (that is how it dechlorinates). The only way to make ammonia non-toxic, beyond taking it out of the aquarium is to oxidize it to nitrite and then to nitrate. There is nothing in prime that can do that. What is written on the bottle is marketing garbage.

More than likely the pH of your aquarium is low enough (< 8.5 or so) that most of the "ammonia" that is being registered by your test kit is really ammonium (far far far less toxic than ammonia) instead of free ammonia.

Bingo! We have a winner!

This is a fact, and science backs it up.

[Hobbit]

35 minutes ago, DShelton said:

It is chemically impossible for that to happen, prime is a reducing agent (that is how it dechlorinates). The only way to make ammonia non-toxic, beyond taking it out of the aquarium is to oxidize it to nitrite and then to nitrate. There is nothing in prime that can do that.

I would love to discuss this further but we are getting way off topic from @mgudyka’s original question, so I made a new topic for us:

Everyone wanting to discuss Prime go heeeere ☝️☝️☝️☝️

[DShelton]

 

We really should take this out of @mgudykathread.