Gone For A Month And Returned To A Mess

[Blivius]

I was out of town for a month and could only make arrangements to have someone feed the fish and add fresh water as needed. No cleaning.

When I get home I am horrified. The water looked brown and mucky. One of the bio-wheels had stopped. The volcano bubbler was dead.

So I test the ammonia level first. I have never seen the ammonia color that deep of a green before.

Tank size: 60 gallon
pH: 7.6
ammonia: 8.0+
nitrite:1.0
nitrate:80+
kH:?
gH:?
tank temp:79.9

Total Fish: 15 guppies, 3 balloon mollies, 1 large molly.

Casualties:
1 molly, the large.
4 guppies.
a load of pond snails.

I understand the fish but the pond snails i don't. I let the pond snail population cycle in this tank. When they get to be too many I remove a lot of them and drop them in my clown loach tank. At first I thought the "caretaker" had littered the bottom of the tank with white gravel, but it turned out to be snail shells. They were bleach white and everywhere. A few snails with healthy brown shells did survive.

About my water. My tap water sucks. I have to use bottled drinking water from my local Publix. I add Aqua Nova (sp) for conditioner, and a 3 day feeder occasionally to add calcium etc to the water.

That was all 2 days ago. I did a 30 gallon water change immediately. I added salt, and prime. I also added prime last night.

Today:
pH: 7.6
ammonia: 2.0+
nitrite:1.5
nitrate:40+
kH:?
gH:?
tank temp:79.9

2 more mollies dead and 1 more guppy dead.
Last molly was gasping so I moved her to my fry tank with 5 of the guppies who looked the worst. I should have moved them earlier. I feel bad over this.

I am going to do a 15-20 gallon water change tonight.

Is the worst over?

What else can I do? I have never had to deal with this much ammonia.

Shouldn't my nitrite be higher?

Should I just totally evacuate? I could cram my 10 gallon fry tank full, even though I know it way beyond it's limits right now.

And what killed the snails?

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

 

[Tolak]

Continue with the large daily water changes. You are experiencing a mini cycle, the increasing nitrite shows that. Increasing aeration will help, either by dropping the water level a little so the water splashes in, creating more surface motion, or adding an air stone.

Nitrite inhibits a fish's blood from carrying O2 properly, the gasping is caused by this.

 

[Hawkins]

the sudden drop in the levels could kill them

move them to your next tank and VERY slowly add some of the new tank's water into the container with the fish in

 

[I Make Gum]

I had a similar experience with my snails only tank. Are you adding liquid calcium? I use a liquid chemical test and when i checked their water after adding Kent's liquid, all test tubes were maxed, the darkest colors possible. 4 of the 5 snails I had eventually died (within 7 to 10 days) they were mystery snails. Turns out I had added too much Kents. But teh readings did look like a mini cycle as some one has said.

If you are using some kind of liquid calcium, then, perhaps the person watching over your tank was careless when changing the water and added too much? Maybe forgot your instructions and followed the instructions on back (that is what I had done when I OD'ed my snails--followed the label?)

To fix it, I had to do 50% water changes daily until readings calmed down. I also temporarily removed the snail that survived. I think this situation stressed him so much that he died about 2 and 1/2 months later.

Sorry for your losses! Good luck with getting back on track.

 

[Tolak]

the sudden drop in the levels could kill them

move them to your next tank and VERY slowly add some of the new tank's water into the container with the fish in

The levels themselves will kill the fish, we are not dealing with old tank syndrome here, rather a tank that has been neglected for only a month, and experiencing cycling problems.

With old tank syndrome you will not be seeing any ammonia or nitrites, you will have nitrates off the chart, hardness & total dissolved solids that are through the roof, and usually a very low pH due to the accumilated acidic waste.