Re: [GSAS-Member] Thick Water

["Susan Welenofsky" <welenofsky@comcast.net>]

Take the fish out, put them in a bucket or another tank and do a serious
water change on the offending tank. Anytime you see fish have trouble
breathing after a major muck-up, immediately do another water change, or
several. Don't wait overnight!

Susan

-----Original Message-----
From: gsas-member-bounces@thekrib.com
[mailto:gsas-member-bounces@thekrib.com] On Behalf Of Laurel Larsen
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 7:55 PM
To: Greater Seattle Aquarium Society member chat
Subject: Re: [GSAS-Member] Thick Water

What likely happened is that you stirred up a great deal of detritus  
that had either formed anaerobic pockets or just hadn't made it's way  
through the nitrogen cycle, and you had a huge ammonia spike. You  
should consider testing your water for ammonia and nitrites to see if  
you have ANYTHING registering.  A properly cycled tank(with an intact  
nitrogen cycle) shouldn't have readings of ANY ammonia or nitrite.   
Such readings would indicate that stuff that shouldn't have been in  
the water column was.  Heavy breathing is symptomatic of ammonia  
poisoning in fish.   You may consider dropping the tank temperature to  
the low range and slowly dropping the pH as much as is safe.  Ammonia  
is less deadly at lower pH.  Do some reading on old tank syndrome and  
be careful when stirring up detritus.  It's one of the reason that I  
switched to sand in my tank, poo cannot settle between grains of sand.

On Feb 17, 2009, at 7:35 PM, Shango Los wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I did a serious clean one of my community tanks last night.  During  
> that
> cleaning, the water churned A LOT.  It became thick with sludge  
> (what is the
> word for it? Moosh? Melsh?)  Unfortunately, the White Clouds and  
> Guppies
> began to have difficulty breathing I realized.  Today, I see that I  
> lost 3
> fish overnight and one more is heavy breathing .  I had no idea that  
> the
> thick water could be THAT bad for the fish.
>
> Has this ever happened to anyone else?  Where should one draw the  
> line with
> churning the water?  How can one avoid this?  Is this worse with  
> small fish?
>
> Anything folks have to offer I'd like to hear.  I don't want to  
> cause this
> suffering again.
>
> Thanks
>
> Shango
>
> _______________________________________________
> GSAS-Member mailing list
> GSAS-Member@thekrib.com
> http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/gsas-member

_______________________________________________
GSAS-Member mailing list
GSAS-Member@thekrib.com
http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/gsas-member

_______________________________________________
GSAS-Member mailing list
GSAS-Member@thekrib.com
http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/gsas-member