A cursed tank

[Ilovemyfishies]

I recently purchased a 5 gallon tank that housed my platy fry, who I had to pull out of the main tank due to a costia infestation during their birth. I was afraid of putting them in my other 5 gallon fry tank, so I ran out and purchased one. I put in my cycled media from an existing healthy tank, along with some water from the cycled existing tank. I guess the costia attacked the fry even though I moved them, they lived 4 days. I disenfected the tank with boiling hot water and less than 1/4 of a capful of bleach. I let it sit for 2 hours, then I rinsed out the tank several times with boiling hot water and let it air dry.

Since that tank was now free, I moved my betta out of his 1 12/ gallon tank to the 5 gallon (his water and cycled filter), well, the water started getting cloudy within 2 days and a week later I found him dead.

Once again, I repeated this entire process and decided to put my new pleco (very small around 2 inches) who I was QTing, before putting him in the bigger QT tank (which I was treating with Jungle Lifeguard, since the box said do no use on scaleless fish. Needless to say 3 days later he's dead. Is this aquarium cursed or am I doing something totatlly wrong with the disinfecting process? I have 4 other successful and thriving tanks, including the occupants of the costia infestation, who are thriving!!!!

Is bleach the reason why this happened? should I purchase some sort of disinfectant, or just try to return the aquarium? I'm tempted just to toss the aquarium in the trash.

 

[allaboutfish]

yes the bleach could be the reason for this did you rinse it out over and over?

 

[Rokuzachi]

When cleaning a tank with bleach, it's a good idea not only to wash it extremely thoroughly, but to also use a lot of dechlorinator to make sure.

You've got to be very careful of the bleach you use, too. If it has additives in it like perfumes or other cleaning agents, then you really shouldn't use it to clean a tank. When I was looking for plain bleach, I had to look kind of hard at the store because almost everything on the normal cleaning shelf had all sorts of stuff in it to make it smell better, degrease or whatever.