Smelly water

[Alaris]

Why not? Match temp and dechlorinate and you are good to go. If the tank smells that bad I would do a major change say 85% and give the filter an extra good cleaning. Use dechlorinated water on the pads.

Not regarding the smell, the tank is only at 2.0ppm ammonia and 1.0ppm of that is from the tap water and if you dose the whole tank with a single dose of Prime, that brings it down to 0.2ppm that isn't locked up. A 50% pwc per day would be sufficient.

Now about the smell, could it be coming from your filter media?

 

[black hills tj]

To be honest, Alaris, I rarely do 50% water changes. I do a 75-90% water change on a weekly basis, and if I am not dosing ferts, I do them twice a week on all of my tanks.

 

[KenW]

i changed the media 3 days ago after all the fish died.

 

[Alaris]

To be honest, Alaris, I rarely do 50% water changes. I do a 75-90% water change on a weekly basis, and if I am not dosing ferts, I do them twice a week on all of my tanks.

How come you do such large pwc's?

i changed the media 3 days ago after all the fish died.

And that's when the smell started too, right? It might be linked. I was reading that when you don't have biological filtration it can cause your tank to stink, but I thought it would be more like a fishy stink than a sulfur stink.

 

[KenW]

the LFS suggested it since everything died and the ammonia was so high. I am thinking I will wait until the weekend to do another. The numbers aren't completely whacked and the fish and snail(who has been enclosed up in his shell since the fiasco started on Sunday) are the happiest they've been since before i messed with the substrate.

 

[KenW]

how many pounds of gravel substrate per gallon is the norm, anyway? i've seen many different suggestions...

 

[black hills tj]

how many pounds of gravel substrate per gallon is the norm, anyway? i've seen many different suggestions...

Whatever looks best to you to be honest. SW is a different story.

i changed the media 3 days ago after all the fish died.

What do you mean by "changed the media?" If you removed all of your media, and inserted completely new media in your filter, you are going to have to build up all of your bacteria again...basically re-cycling the tank.

How come you do such large pwc's?

The fish love it, and it helps me start with a fresh slate when I EI dose my tanks with ferts. Also, I have driftwood in all of my tanks. Some of the wood is still leeching tannins into the water, so the larger PWC's help clear it up.

 

[MichaelsLilGray]

First off... the driftwood... boil the crap out of it... it will stop doing that leach that you see. Secondly is this Sand you used or Gravel? I had a very similar situation with sand.. i removed it and never had to deal with it again.

 

[black hills tj]

First off... the driftwood... boil the crap out of it... it will stop doing that leach that you see.

haha...I boil all my wood several times over, but it still leaves just a small tint to my tanks.

 

[MichaelsLilGray]

Then continue boiling? Its the only way to remove the toxins... and its not good for the fish.

 

[black hills tj]

Then continue boiling? Its the only way to remove the toxins... and its not good for the fish.

As far as I know, tannins are not harmful to fish at all. In fact, many fish appreciate the tannin "dyed" water, and others are often induced to spawn by it.

 

[MichaelsLilGray]

Well then never frekin mind 0_o. maybe your driftwood smells like rotten eggs

 

[Purrbox]

Okay. Time to get back on topic folks. Ken needs help figuring out what's going on with his aquarium.

For a planted aquarium about 3" of gravel is the norm to give plenty of depth for the plants to root. However if you don't have live plants, then 1-1.5" is more than enough.

 

[Johnny Tuttle]

What was your existing substrate? Was it sand that hadn't been stirred before this?

 

[gzeiger]

That smell is certainly encountered in some natural environments when stirring up compacted substrate. I wouldn't expect it from large-grain gravel, but any area with water sufficiently stagnant that bacteria can use up all the oxygen will start to smell like that. You didn't describe fish symptoms prior to death, but it is also possible that stirring up sand/mud can cause a low oxygen condition that can be dangerous for fish. I'm afraid I don't know if the ammonia level is consistent with this theory; I've never encountered it in an aquarium environment before. It makes sense that a sudden release of a large quantity of organic material would cause an ammonia spike though.

 

[diogenes]

what are you dechlorinating with? I use amquel+ and it has a sulfur smell to it. Matter o fact I was just noticing how my tank had become rather odoriferous. Also if you're using prime or amquel+ (or regular amquel) you will often show inacurate ammonia readings. With regular amquel I show a .25 ammonia consistently. With amquel+ it's .5. When I use a stress coat dechlorinator and do suffieciently large PWC then it's 0 like normal. Matter o' fact, the LFS guy told me I would have these readings when I bought the products. He was right.