NASTY NASTY TANK

[tropicfishman]

ok my friends ( 2 girls ) are being evicted in 30 days, and they are tore up over it, they have a small 10 gallon with 2 small plecos, a bala shark and what i think is gourami. Get this one girl got it last valentines day and it has never had been cleaned!!!! none of the gravel has ever been cleaned, only thing she did was dump new water in and amazingly the fish ahve survived this long!!! it has one of the 2 25 watt bulbs burned out and the filter cartridge is changed only when the filter itself quits pumpingout water and shuts offbecuase its so clogged. So I went over today and cleaned the gravel and detailed the tank for her, I refilled the tank 8 times during gravel cleaning, and i was using a 2 gallon bucket to collect the dirty water, so thats 16 gallons of water to clean the gravel. the water was literally black when i started siphoning, it clogged my sipon 3 times in which i had to use a small metal rod to unclog the harden pieces of debris, i replaced the filter cartridge, cleaned the hood and replaced the bulbs, detailed the filter unit itself, gave her a brand new air pump i had laying around and bought a couple of bubble stones for her lol 3 1/2 later the tank is spotless and running great, just thought i'd share this story of how ran down this tank got lol later peeps

[crazyred]

That tank was bound to have a scorching case of "old tank syndrome" I'm amazed the fish survived the water change.

[malkore]

Good job on fixing the situation and educating them. Hopefully they'll catch on that fish aren't exactly 'maintenance free' pets.