Advice Needed! Cycling A Tank With Already Poorly Neon Tetras

[pammmie]

A friend of mine had a fairly decent sized tropical tank with various fish running well for a couple of months, though after visiting today was disgusted to discover she had long given up on the tank and has turned into a whole lot of algae and fish remains. Having a closer look in the tank i was shocked to spot 3 live though unhappy looking neon tetras! She had also given the filter and light away 4,5 days ago too, leaving whatever was left to die in this now stagnent highly polluted tank. After giving her a much needed lecture on cruelty, i changed about 10/20% of the water, gave them some flake food and got a lamp nearby to give them at least a bit of lighting. After 10 minutes the tetras seemed to have perked up a bit.

As was too late today to reach shops, tomorrow i plan to buy as big a tank i can get on a low budget and hopefully try and save these poor creatures. I've kept tropical fish before so know the basics, though under these circumstances would much appreciate any advice to try and give these fish as little more grief as possible! I was thinking of taking some water and gravel from the tank, as polluted as it will be to try and kick start the cycle. I've read about plant only filtered tanks, if i were to buy lots of aquarium plants tomorrow would this help while the filter is cycling? Any advice on how much and often i should do water changes? Haven't got the greatest of hopes of saving them all, though would like to try at least so they're not slowly dying in current situation. Thanks

 

[Stephan]

From what I understand neon tetras are not the hardiest of fish. Perhaps someone in ur area would be willing to accept them. Unfortunately most of the helpful bacteria is in the filter which is gone. You need to do like huge 90% water changes a day while cycling from what I've gleaned here. Also check craigslist for a used setup. Benefit is that if they just got rid of fish it may have some biology left. Best of luck.

 

[fluttermoth]

I don't know; three neons is not goingto be much of a bioload; it's got to be worth a try anyway.

Get a load of live plants, as you say as they will absorb some ammonia; and get an ammonia test (a liquid one) so you can monitor the conditions.

I'd take as much of the old water away with you as you can too; there's a thing called 'old tank syndrome' which might apply in this case, where tanks have been neglected for so long that the fish have become so accustomed to the high levels of pollutants that putting the fish into new, clean water can actually kill them through shock.

I'd start off with 20% changes every couple of days.

Best of luck and I hope they make it and don't blame yourself if they don't; at least you've tried

 

[hanny93]

I'd take as much of the old water away with you as you can too; there's a thing called 'old tank syndrome' which might apply in this case, where tanks have been neglected for so long that the fish have become so accustomed to the high levels of pollutants that putting the fish into new, clean water can actually kill them through shock.

I can second this, a friend of mine kept 4 baby bala sharks in about 60L for about a week, as soon as they put them into the huge 1500 litre tank ready cycled, 2 died.

I'd say keep 20% of the water, all the gravel for now and get them in a tank with some mature media and planty of live plants like elodea, the mature media will kickstart the cycle, and as fluttermoth said, three neons isnt a huge bioload anyway so it shouldnt take too long if you get a mini cycle at all, and the plants will help with excess nitrogen and oxygenate the water aswell if you get enough of them!

 

[pammmie]

On my budget I bought a 14L tank and collected them yesterday, they all look pretty content now- really thought the bumpy hour long public transport trip might have finished them off! Brought back about a 1/3 of their old tank water and have been slowly topping up with new water to keep any more shock to a minimum. They've had a big clump of java moss in with them and a friend is giving me more plants, filter media and gravel from his tank tonight. I've started setting up my old much bigger tank, thought will be at least a week until ordered bits have arrived. Fingers crossed thats enough to keep them going for now. Thanks for all the advice

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with FM, the fish are so few that it should be pretty easy to keep them in pristine water despite it still being a fish-in cycle. Don't forget that the goal in fish-in cycling is to try to figure out what pattern of water changes (percentage and frequency) will keep the ammonia and/or nitrite levels at or below 0.25ppm until you can be home again to change water. You may find that with the small number of small fish you can go a while before either substance would threaten to be too much. And I agree, plants might help some with some of the ammonia.

~~waterdrop~~