Awful Day

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Lengelund

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
Messages
64
Location
Virginia
Went to feed my fish today and nobody showed up. Then I saw the bodies. Lots of bodies. The thermostat on my heater malfunctioned. The heater came on last night and never turned off. It was set at 78 degrees. Water temp in my tank? 97 degrees! I lost 9 beautiful Africans! Amazingly, there are three survivors in my tank. It was a very sad day, moving all my rocks and caves to net up all the dead ones. :-(
 
Oh wow!! :( I'm sooooo sorry to hear about this!! Horrible!! Again sorry for your all you have lost! I can't imagine! :(

Hope you got a new heater.
 
New heater. New digital thermometer. Also, sadly, new net. Maybe some new fish this weekend, if I can shake off this loss.
 
So sorry about your losses.

You should complain to your heater manufacturer. Aqueon mailed me a free one when mine started to fail.
 
I am so very sorry for your loss. I just can't imagine how I would feel. Devastated, for sure. I had that happen once with a heater but there was only a single betta in the tank. Even that hurt.

Write to the manufacturer. I have heard about them making restitution to people who suffer large fish loss.
 
I feel for you. Same thing happened to me last month when I was away on vacation, except that mine was even hotter (just over 100). Nothing like coming back from vacation finding 55 gallons of fish soup in your living room. :(
 
Well, the heater was 10 years old. I should have known better. I threw that thing in the trash and don't know the manufacturer.
Question: Do you think it killed my bacteria? Would like to start restocking soon and I'm wondering about this.
 
I've never rearched what temp range beneficial bacteria can survive in, but I can just tell you anecdotally that mine seem to have survived just fine. I reset my tank and, although I had a very brief mild ammonia spike, things settled down quickly and are just fine. The water conditions are good enough that my T. Meeki that I've had only a few weeks paired up and spawned already. So while I can't give you a definite yes or no, I can tell you that my bacteria survived just fine. But I can also say this: Just like any life form, bacteria need to eat. So if you have completely cleaned out your tank and removed anything that can generate ammonia, your bacteria will either die off or at least go dormant on you. Since my fish basically slow cooked for about a week, they mostly disintigrated. I took most of the big remains out of the tank, but purposely refrained from doing a deep clean until I was almost ready to restock so that my bacteria would continue to live.
 
that's a good question. i would definitely test your water for a week (at least) before buying new fish.
 
Thanks, bosk1. I had three survivors, so they are generating some waste. The fish that were killed were adult or near adult size so I had a large bioload. Any new guys will be babies. Unless I lost a significant amount of BB in the heatwave, I shouldn't have a problem with new fish. Will be testing, for sure.
 
Back
Top Bottom