Bad Day

[Mola Mola]

I came home yesterday, after having been away for 3 days, to find a dead platy stuck against the filter inlet. After removing him, I tested the water and got a very high ammonia reading.

In such a rush to do a big water change, I forgot to turn the heater off.

Even worse, I left my wife to do the suctioning, while I got some stuff ready, and when I came in the heater was making a ticking noise and black smoke was starting to pour from the plastic holder.

Not a good day!

Anyway, all sorted now, got a new heater, and no trace of ammonia in the tank.

Just thought I'd share

 

[FishBlast]

I came home yesterday, after having been away for 3 days, to find a dead platy stuck against the filter inlet. After removing him, I tested the water and got a very high ammonia reading.

In such a rush to do a big water change, I forgot to turn the heater off.

Even worse, I left my wife to do the suctioning, while I got some stuff ready, and when I came in the heater was making a ticking noise and black smoke was starting to pour from the plastic holder.

Not a good day!

Anyway, all sorted now, got a new heater, and no trace of ammonia in the tank.

Just thought I'd share

Sorry to hear, I hope the rest of your fish will be ok.
What kind of filter is that? An outside one or inside one?
Mine's a sponge filter that's inside the tank, I doubt any fish can get into that.
A lot of people reported that fish (mostly Corys) have entered inside their filters, but I always forget to ask if it's an outside filter.

 

[Mola Mola]

Hi FishBlast

It is an internal filter, and the fish can't get into it.

What I think happened is that the fish died of natural causes and then the suction of the inlet basically stuck the fish to the grill.

I had a similar situation with a fish that was dying some time back, it was very weak and had lost a lot of its tail and so it couldn't swim. The current in the tank just kept swirling it around the tank and, every so often, it would get stuck to the grill in the same way that this dead one did.

Lucky I came home when I did. A day or two later and, given the ammonia spike, and I might have come back to find all of the fish dead.