Need Water Change Badly, No Conditioner!

[StevesPrettyCool]

Hi all, i got a kinda serious question. I have been sick for the past 4 days with the flu or something. I got no car and usually take the bus to the pet stores which takes about 2 hours and I just dont have that energy.

I woke up this morning and noticed a baby synodontis petricola (catfish) upside down dead at the bottom of the tank. Now it seems like my other fish (11 Tiger and Albino Tiger Barbs, common pleco, and 2 other synodontis petricolas) are behaving very weird, flying solo instead of schooling, staying up at the top of the tank and extremely un-active.

I been putting off a water change for a few days because of my illness but i believe that was why the first fish died. Problem is, i have no conditioner, hence the delay in water changes. A buddy of mine is cycling a tank so he has my master test kit so i dont know my current parameters, but just by looking at the fish i can tell something is wrong.

Would it be safe to change any water without conditioner? Should I try taking the trek into town tomorrow? Honestly I'm not feeling very well at all and may not be able to handle the bus trip without puking all over the place, but I also dont know how much more the fish can take either...

Long story short... Water change WITHOUT conditioner... Yay or Nay?

thanks everyone

 

[librarygirl]

Defiitely no. You might be able to let the water sit out overnight and some of the toxins might evaporate, but not sure if they all would. Can your friend who has your test kit drop off some of his conditioner for you? (and your test kit as you clearly need it right now)

 

[StevesPrettyCool]

yeah he ended up coming by and bringing both a few hours ago. did a round of tests before the water change and oddly enough nothing was far off. ph was ok at 7.8ish, a lil high but i dont believe its too high for a synodontis. nitrates were a little high at 20-25ppm-ish but the water change evened everything out nicely. but even tho the tests came out ok, the water still looked a bit old and grimey so im going to do another change in the morning.

i have noticed my pleco and the catfish kinda push eachother around sometimes and the cats are very young so i wonder if overnight the pleco just stressed him to death... just to be safe i'll be pulling the pleco out for a bit and see how the cats react, if they seem happier i will wait till they get older to add any other bottom feeders.

Fish look happier tho, I'd say with the AM partial, they'll be happy swimmers