Adopted Fish Tank

[isarek]

I adopted a 30 gallon tank three days ago and I'm running into trouble.

First off, I'll say that everything I know I've learned in the last few days. I never intended to own an aquarium, but I have a friend who clears out abandoned homes and she found 2 aquariums (the other was small, maybe 10 gallons, but was leaking and I left it behind) abandoned in the back yards of one of the homes she was working on they were going to just dump them. Neither had filters or heaters and were outside at least the length of her time there which was 10 days (this is California summer and it's been about 100 for the last couple weeks. They were both extremely overgrown with algae but all the fish seemed fine.

The small tank has 2 bala sharks (maybe 2in. each) and a gourami (bluish white?) The big tank had a 4in. black Moore Goldfish and a large Common Pleco (12-14in.).

To start I drained maybe five gallons of water (from the big tank) into a cooler so I could move the fish. Then I dumped the rest of the tank so I could transport it home.

When I got home I scrubbed the algae out of the tank and gently rinsed the gravel. I filled the tank setup a new filter (Penguin 150) and added the appropriate amount of dechlorinator. I waited 30 minutes and added the rest of the water used to transport them after that I put each of the fish in separate bags and floated them in the tank for a half hour and then released. The goldfish I put in a five gallon bucket because my wife told me that they didn't get along with other smaller fish.

The goldfish was dead the next afternoon when I got home from work.

I've been feeding the rest of them twice a day with API tropical flakes and Dropping 4-5 hikari algae wafers at night for the pleco.

Yesterday the pleco was acting sluggish but I figured it was just sleeping after getting used to the change. The water was also getting really cloudy, so I cycled out 10 gallons with fresh dechlorinated water.

This morning he (the pleco) was exactly where he was last night so nudged him and he didn't respond. He was still attached to a stump and wasn't bloated, but the water was too cloudy to see his eyes. I did notice the water was about 70 degrees which means it probably got down to maybe 66-68 in the night. I had to get to work so I had to leave him. I'm getting a test kit today, but I guess I'm wondering what wrong. I thought he was the one I didn't need to worry about. The other fish are fine.

Is he dead? Or just dormant (is that a thing?)

I feel terrible. I was thinking was doing these fish a favor, but now it seems like I'm just killing them slowly.

Sorry for the long post, I'm just torn up him.

 

[emilygupps]

I can totally relate. I'm in a similar situation. I'm sort of novice too but this is what I think went wrong:

The fish were surviving in VERY crappy conditions. So when you put them in the cooler and scrubbed their tanks and added fresh clean water, I THINK maybe it was a shock to their systems and you might have killed any good bacteria. They were used to the high ammonia levels and high water temps.

At this point I'm not sure what you can do other than buy a heater. 12 inch plecos really need a bigger tank than a 20g and the Bala sharks get huge. Either way, any thing you do can only be a temporary fix. :-/ hopefully an expert will chime in.

No matter what it's a great thing you're trying to do.

 

[emilygupps]

I say I can relate because we also adopted a fish tank (3 weeks ago), and the vet techs at the humane society bagged all the fish and dumped the tank and scrubbed it with tap water before the bf brought it home. To top it off he dumped them (2 2" silver dollars, 4 neons, 4 danios) in to our clean 10g tank.

I was anticipating testing the levels to see what we were dealing with, checking the temp of the water, etc. that option was no longer available to me so now, we are doing water changes every other day since the qt tank wasn't exactly cycled (part of why I planned to rehab them in their original tank) the ammonia gets up to 2ppm by the second day, and oddly enough my neons look best right before a water change when the water is crummiest. After a %50 water change and a dose of prime they look horrible, pale, floating upside down. They never eat well after a water change either. But right around the ammonia creeping up they look awesome!

I suspect our fish just aren't used to good husbandry.

 

[isarek]

Well, he's dead. It seems weird that he never floated tho.

I'm inclined to agree on the shock theory. I finally tested the water yesterday and the NH and ammonia were high, but not considering the tank is new, and certainly not high enough to kill him. And I inspected both him and the goldfish and I didn't see Ich spots or any obvious signs of disease.

I have a heater now and I'll be monitoring the water and doing regular water changes. The balas and the gourami seem to be doing great tho.

Oh well, I guess this is fresh start. The fish that are left are small enough doe the tank, at least for the time being.