dizzied
Fish Addict
So yesterday, I had the most random of ideas to move three clams from my river tank to my goby tank. I know, I know, "What's the point of that?". Like I said, it was really random. This morning, I took a quick look at the tank and noticed that a few snails have begun prying open the clams. Because I had to go, I didn't bother removing them, assuming that it couldn't do that much damage.
When I got back tonight, I went on to check the tank again. All the clams have been pried open and have snails all over them. I went ahead to remove them, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my precious gobies, dead on the substrate. Then I found more dead gobies, and noticed that virtually all the other gobies weren't acting normally. They were overactive, and couldn't swim straight. So I took out the test kit and tested the water. The parameters, which are usually no higher than 0-0-20 had gone up to 1-0-80. I've always heard the amount of ammonia a dead clam can produce is insane, but since I haven't had any die on me, I never thought much of it.
My next thought was to do a massive water change. Unfortunately, I was out of my regular water conditioner , and all the stores were closed at that point, but I did find a very small sample-size bottle of water conditioner. It came with one of those aquarium kits, and since I never had a reason to throw it out, I never did, and it paid off. The water conditioner did have one drawback - it adjusts the PH to 7 (my tank's PH is 8.4), but I'd rather have a small PH swing than a tank full of ammonia or chlorine. I did a 50% water change, and I'm going to do another later. All the gobies that could be moved to other tanks were moved. Java moss was added to help absorb some of the ammonia/nitrates. It's been two hours since that. The gobies are acting more normally now, but I can see they're not back to 100% yet.
The death toll was 3, and it could increase come tomorrow, but hopefully not. All this was certainly a fitting end to my incredibly stressful week. The back of my neck quite literally feels like it's going to burst.
I'm going to the LFS first thing tomorrow morning to get better water conditioner. What do you guys think about using zeolite in my situation?
When I got back tonight, I went on to check the tank again. All the clams have been pried open and have snails all over them. I went ahead to remove them, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my precious gobies, dead on the substrate. Then I found more dead gobies, and noticed that virtually all the other gobies weren't acting normally. They were overactive, and couldn't swim straight. So I took out the test kit and tested the water. The parameters, which are usually no higher than 0-0-20 had gone up to 1-0-80. I've always heard the amount of ammonia a dead clam can produce is insane, but since I haven't had any die on me, I never thought much of it.
My next thought was to do a massive water change. Unfortunately, I was out of my regular water conditioner , and all the stores were closed at that point, but I did find a very small sample-size bottle of water conditioner. It came with one of those aquarium kits, and since I never had a reason to throw it out, I never did, and it paid off. The water conditioner did have one drawback - it adjusts the PH to 7 (my tank's PH is 8.4), but I'd rather have a small PH swing than a tank full of ammonia or chlorine. I did a 50% water change, and I'm going to do another later. All the gobies that could be moved to other tanks were moved. Java moss was added to help absorb some of the ammonia/nitrates. It's been two hours since that. The gobies are acting more normally now, but I can see they're not back to 100% yet.
The death toll was 3, and it could increase come tomorrow, but hopefully not. All this was certainly a fitting end to my incredibly stressful week. The back of my neck quite literally feels like it's going to burst.
I'm going to the LFS first thing tomorrow morning to get better water conditioner. What do you guys think about using zeolite in my situation?
