Question

[Sharmon]

I have a 29 gallon tall tank, Aqueon 30 filter, gravel and 1 plant, and a very old fluorescent light.
I need to restart my tank all over again.
The first thing I'm going to do is scrub the filter clean (it has a black/brown green gooey slime coming from the filter).There are no fish in the tank I lost them all I have is 1 plant.
This is my plan.

I'm changing the water completely but leaving the gravel at least until I decide what fish I want next. I'm starting with feeder guppies after I do all the rest of the stuff.
I'm realizing that light and brightly colored fish look better with darker gravel.(Thanks for the pictures of all your tanks).
Should I just go ahead and replace it all at once or wait to change the gravel until I decide on the fish I will be keeping? I really want glofish tetras. What cat fish will be OK with them?
Thanks for helping.

 

[Autumnsky]

Did you have a illness which killed them off?

If you have beneficial bacteria still going in the tank then removing the gravel / throwing it away, could cause you to NEED to restart the cycle.

If you have gunk on the filter you could just clean it. But if it was disease starting all over would help your future fish.

The problem with feeder Guppies is that they are already stressed and making them more likely to become ill and die, or share disease with the new fish you might put in the tank.

If you like your gravel, then you could bleach and clean it and super rinse to use it again.

 

[Sharmon]

replying

I think is was just a very bad water in the tank that killed all the fish. This tank is to hard for me to care for. And because we are getting a new tank we just decided to start all over. We are even changing the fish we want. We have very hard water here we joke we can eat the water instead of drink it. Limescale is a is a devil to clean off. At some point we will change the light and lid too. We have only one local fish store here and it's nasty. You can smell it from outside the door. So it's big box only and they are not trained in fish keeping.

 

[Autumnsky]

A magic eraser helps on hard water deposits and vinegar too, a bit of baking soda is always fun and scours gently. Jus in case you need the other tank for QT or more shrimp or fish .