I crashed my tank 😫

[Theresa_M]

Dear fellow fish enthusiasts, I am devastated. I crashed my main 75g display tank last night. It's all my fault (of course) and so many of my beautiful pets have died or are on the brink. In my frenzy to fix it all, I may have done even more damage 😭 Only time will tell. 

I don't need any advice. I know what I'm doing (that was a laughable sentence to write). I just wanted to share with people who will understand how devastated I am right now.

Thanks for listening.

[Mmiller2001]

Share what happened so others might learn.

[Theresa_M]

It's just embarrassing. It was really the perfect storm of everything you've ever learned through fishkeeping school that you are not supposed to do. So, if people avoid doing everything this fine forum advises against, they should be good 🙂

I have a mature 75 g tank with a whole host of fish and plant life that hasn't had any new fish added in over 6 mos (maybe even closer to 9 mos). No additions, no subtractions - just bliss. I wouldn't say that it was overstocked, but it was well stocked. 

Diamond tetras have been on my list for about a year, and last week I went on a road trip to my favorite fish store just to check things out. They had the most beautiful, fat and healthy diamonds I've seen yet and couldn't resist picking up 6. I also wanted to add to my otocinclus clan, as I only had 4. I picked up 3 more on my trip. 

Lesson 1 = QUARANTINE. I did not. They were so healthy looking (as is every single thing I buy from this store) that I tossed them right in. Two days passed and life was good. 

On day 3, I had a dead new otto. I was a little surprised, but chalked it up to a stress death or something like that. The next day, I had a random neon tetra death. Ok, that caused me pause. I checked water parameters with strips and also the kit as a back up. Parameters were perfectly normal. The next day, I lost a black neon and another neon. Still normal water parameters. The next day, lost a borneo sucker, another black neon and another neon. Still perfect parameters - 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, ~20 nitrates. Water was clear. I'm thinking, if the water is fine, there's no need to change it. I had just done a water change the day before adding the new fish. I didn't attribute this to bioload, I attributed it to sick fish. 

So, I figured, it's been a solid 9 mos or so since the tank had been treated and with these new fish, better to be safe then sorry (I was already feeling pretty sorry). I decided to treat the entire display tank with the med trio and did so last night. (Maybe lesson two should have been to remove the new fish and put them in quarantine instead of treating the whole tank!)

I didn't go back to check on them this morning because I've done this before without incident - it's how I treat all new fish in my other tanks. 

Lesson 2 = MONITOR MEDS. If you use them ... keep an eye on things.

Today, when the lights popped on shortly after noon, my husband called to me that the tank looked cloudy. Meh, no big deal. That's to be expected when you medicate. 

I took my time getting over there to see what was up. I bent down to look. It wasn't the cloudiness of the water that concerned me. What concerned me were several dead tetras belly up and all of the rest of fish (INCLUDING MY PLECO) at the surface of the water gasping for air. 

I stuck my hand in the water and it felt HOT. Checked the temp and it hadn't changed. I assumed that the heater was burning out on me and frying my fish and that my thermometer was broken. That's when I added another airline/pump and removed the lids. 

Ha! I have literally no idea why that was my next action. 

Lesson 3 = CHECK PARAMETERS FIRST! When you see cloudy water, check your parameters and do a water change!

10 mins goes by with no change in behavior.

In my panic, I hastily grabbed all of my equipment and did a 25% water change and replaced with cooler water (smacking my forehead right now).

Puzzled, I left, asking my husband the check parameters for me. He said, "That can't be the problem. We just checked them last night and they were fine." I encouraged him to do it anyway. 

NITRITES were higher than we have ever seen in our lives! I didn't even know these kinds of results existed!!!!

And the bloom! It must be bacteria!!

I immediately did a 50% water change.

Things are better. Nitrites are there, but barely.

I will now spend the next many - many - days recycling my tank with all of my display fish in cycle with multiple water changes a day. It's not ideal, but with more fish on the way tomorrow that I purchased online over the weekend - I don't have a choice. Those new fish are going straight into my cycled quarantine tank and my other tanks are full. 

So that's my story.

It's all wrong.

Every bit of it. 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by Theresa_M

[Mmiller2001]

Well written! I had a flashback just reading it! Thank you for sharing. You are not alone. I felt the same way after I killed my entire tank.

[Theresa_M]

I appreciate you @Mmiller2001! Thank you

[Gail Kali]

Thank you for posting. I don’t even have a quarantine tank. And am getting one immediately. I have been really lucky. I started in the’80’s for 5 years and was lucky then and it wasn’t recommended by my lfs. Now decades later I am starting again. 

[Levi_Aquatics]

Thank you for sharing @Theresa_M  I’m sorry about your fish as I know that is really tough. 

[Theresa_M]

Isn't that the truth @Gail Kali? You can go along for so long and not have any problems. Then boom!

There are a couple of scenarios I'm going through as I try to learn from this - the water change with ferts right before adding the new fish, not quarantining ... so many things.

[Patrick_G]

@Theresa_M, I’m so sorry that happened. It sounds super stressful but  you know what you’re doing and what needs to happen to get things back on track. 

[Theresa_M]

Thank you @Patrick_G!

[eatyourpeas]

@Theresa_M, so sorry this happened. We all do the "smack-on-the-head-what-was-I-thinking" at one point or another. I am fairly new to the hobby and am learning a lot, and even when you do everything perfectly disasters happen.

I am glad you are not giving up, and are looking to the recovery phase sharing this event with all of us. People like you keep noobs like me always learning, and for that I am grateful.

I hope you feel better. 😍

[Aqua junky]

So the new fish came in sick? What caused the Nitrites to sore? I guess I missed what actually  caused the spike or did the tank just reset it self?

I am sorry this happened to you!  I would be devastated.  

[Flumpweesel]

Sorry for your losses hopefully the cycle kicks back in soon. I sometimes this hobby really likes to test your resolve.

[Minanora]

Thank you for the information. I'm so sorry this happened to you...

75G water changes are daunting if you do them the old school way... I use a 2.5G bucket to add water, and I pull water out down to 5G buckets.

Medicating a 75.... not fun either.

Then having to remove water while you're supposed to be medicating.... Double whammy.

What brand of heater, and wattage did you have fail?

[Theresa_M]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:16 PM, eatyourpeas said:

@Theresa_M, so sorry this happened. We all do the "smack-on-the-head-what-was-I-thinking" at one point or another. I am fairly new to the hobby and am learning a lot, and even when you do everything perfectly disasters happen.

I am glad you are not giving up, and are looking to the recovery phase sharing this event with all of us. People like you keep noobs like me always learning, and for that I am grateful.

I hope you feel better. 😍

I appreciate that! Thank you for the encouragement!

On 1/4/2022 at 3:19 PM, Aqua junky said:

So the new fish came in sick? What caused the Nitrites to sore? I guess I missed what actually  caused the spike or did the tank just reset it self?

I am sorry this happened to you!  I would be devastated.  

No clue. I'm still trying to work through it. As I said, it was a series of poor decisions on my part and it's hard to say. I think I probably should have started with the water change after that second random death - for sure after the third. I also should have moved the new fish to quarantine at the same time. That's what I'm thinking. Could have been an overloaded tank and I just didn't realize it. Medicating at that moment is my biggest regret, though.

If you have a bunch of fish suddenly dying - all different species - over a series of a few days, it's probably(?) not a disease issue that needs resolving. 

[Theresa_M]

@Minanora I use an Eheim heater in this tank. The heater isn't broken and neither is my thermometer. When I added cooler water, the temp went down. The water feeling hot was not actually the reality of the situation. The temp was hovering around 79/80 and when I did the first water change with cooler water I dropped it to 76/77. Now talk about stress on the fish. Oy. That was not a good decision. I could have validated the temp, but was in a total panic and just wanted to act quickly. 

Maybe that's another lesson - LEVEL YOUR HEAD AND VALIDATE before taking action, lol. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

Thank you for sharing your experience @Theresa_M. I have had that sinking feeling in my body too many times over the course of my time in the hobby. I wish I had the forum then like we do now to have the support. I hope that with water changes and time things settle down enough for you to catch your breath and get some peace. 

[Minanora]

On 1/4/2022 at 1:46 PM, Theresa_M said:

@Minanora I use an Eheim heater in this tank. The heater isn't broken and neither is my thermometer. When I added cooler water, the temp went down. The water feeling hot was not actually the reality of the situation. The temp was hovering around 79/80 and when I did the first water change with cooler water I dropped it to 76/77. Now talk about stress on the fish. Oy. That was not a good decision. I could have validated the temp, but was in a total panic and just wanted to act quickly. 

Maybe that's another lesson - LEVEL YOUR HEAD AND VALIDATE before taking action, lol. 

I see, I see. I did this same panic mode a few months ago when I had a crazy nitrate spike from root tabs... I panicked and changed almost 100% of the water and lost half of my fish over the course of 2 weeks.

[Theresa_M]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:58 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

Thank you for sharing your experience @Theresa_M. I have had that sinking feeling in my body too many times over the course of my time in the hobby. I wish I had the forum then like we do now to have the support. I hope that with water changes and time things settle down enough for you to catch your breath and get some peace. 

I appreciate you! Thank you!

On 1/4/2022 at 4:03 PM, Minanora said:

I see, I see. I did this same panic mode a few months ago when I had a crazy nitrate spike from root tabs... I panicked and changed almost 100% of the water and lost half of my fish over the course of 2 weeks.

Oh no! I feel for you!

[Native Keeper]

Just learn from this experience. The best thing you can do.

[Guppy Guy]

I’ve done something similar. So I have a 10 gallon tank full of guppies and plants, and as you know, when fish waste breaks down, it lowers the ph. Well I knew about this phenomenon, so I did regular water changes. Well, there was about a month and 1/2 where I didn’t do any water changes because I was so busy, or didn’t feel like it. (you can see where this is going…) When I noticed less active fish and melting plants, I decided it was time to see what was up. I finally did a water change, and I don’t usually test water unless there is a problem(with the exception of this one), but right before I dumped out the last of the water, I was like “what the heck. How bad could the water be?” Well, it was bad. Really bad. Shamefully bad. If my guppies weren’t so hardy, I would have lost all of them. My ph read 4.5! A full 3 points below where I usually keep it! I retested the water thinking I did something wrong, but low and behold, it was exactly the same. I realized that I had been really stupid, and haven’t missed a water change since. Also, I always have a small container of seachem alkaline buffer(best one out there in my experience), just in case it happens again.

To fix it, I did a 50% water change, added some alkaline buffer, lowered the temp(higher temps break waste down quicker), and hoped for the best.

The craziest thing by far was that I only lost 2 fish out of the millions in there(no wonder a common name for the guppy was the ‘millions fish’), and they both were at least 2 1/2 years old anyways(my guppies tend to live between 2 and 4 years before a natural death occurs). 

Hopefully everyone learns from our mistakes, and others can learn as well.

[Theresa_M]

@Guppy Guy thank you so much for sharing your story! 

[Goldie Blue]

As someone who lost close to 20 fish a few weeks back due to not knowing I needed to/should quarantine fish, I can sympathize. I am still waking up every morning afraid I might find more dead fish, but thankfully it seems to be under control now. I'm still testing my water every day in fear. It was by far one of the worst feelings I have ever had, and I am still kicking myself for it. I hope you can get your situation back on track soon, good luck!

[Crabby]

@Theresa_M I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve had to deal with this. I’ve also had a massive die-off before, thankfully not in a display aquarium but it was heartbreaking nonetheless. I might share my story, if everyone else is sharing theirs 🙂

 

So in 2020 I was breeding a lot of endlers livebearers. I had a 5 gallon tank that was filled to the brim with plants, snails and endlers. I honestly think there were 50-100 endlers in there, ranging from fry to fully grown adults. They were breeding nonstop, and I loved it! I had a couple massive females in another tank that had been inseminated by a male a long time ago, and were still dropping monthly batches of ~40 fry, and those fry would go straight to a breeder box. I was selling decent sized groups really cheaply on a regular basis, and I think my largest order was 80 juvies, which was crazy, coming out of a 5 gallon and a breeder box.

 

Considering this success with endlers, I jumped at the opportunity when a member of another forum I’m a part of put up the offer to send out a pair of Campoma Blue Star endlers to anyone who could identify which endlers from a group of images were true endlers (and hadn’t been crossed with guppies). I was the first to get it right, and was super stoked. I decided I wanted to put them in my endler tank with my shrimp, and move all the other endlers out. As much as I enjoyed the endlers I had, they were a mix - I had Japanese Blues, yellow cobras, and black bars, all of which are hybrid species with guppies. I wanted to start only keeping pure endlers, like the Blue Stars. In retrospect, I had a couple awesome male black bars with traits I hadn’t seen before, and I totally should’ve put them in a seperate aquarium to line breed, but that’s besides the point. 
I intended to sell off my remaining endlers and start working with other pure species like the Campoma Blue Stars.

Before the Blue Stars arrived, I moved the endlers all into the other 5gal. Now, that was an effort. But it was worth it - the Campoma Blue Stars looked amazing in the planted 5 gal. The other endlers didn’t look so great in the bare bottom tank with a single massive Java fern and some Java moss, but it worked.  For a week.

Then I saw a couple bodies. I looked more carefully, and there were some endlers that were really skinny. I’d dealt with this before - a kind of flatworm that eats all the food the endler eats, to the point where the endler starves and dies. It’s very contagious and very deadly. Yay. Luckily I had meds on hand. I treated immediately, and decided it was all okay; they’d recovered from it before. I had a few more die, but this is to be expected, they were just too far gone when I started the meds. I still had 50 or so. It was fiiiiiiine.

Not.

 

The meds didn’t work. I don’t know why. The fish kept dying. A few every day. I would come home in the evening and catch out all the bodies. I kept treating them, and doing water changes, but nothing helped. Eventually the death rate was getting so high that the bodies were everywhere, and the tank was surely filled with ammonia. At that point it didn’t matter what I did, they were doomed. If I changed enough water to make it clean again, I would’ve shocked & stressed them. If I didn’t water change, they would have died from ammonia poisoning. I essentially had to sit back and watch them all die. It was truly heartbreaking. I’d raised every one of these fish, taken such good care of them, and this is how it ended. And it was surely my fault. 
 

So I know how you’re feeling. And I’m so sorry you’re feeling that way. And I hope you can learn from those mistakes, as I feel I’ve learnt from mine.

[Theresa_M]

Oh @Crabby 😭🤗 Thank you so much for sharing! It means a lot to me and others as well, I'm sure. 

I have to say, I'm not a fan of learning this way!