Help!! Need to redo tank ASAP!

[Robsterlobster9]

Hey everyone,

I have been given the task of fixing my brothers tropical tank for him. He has neglected it over the past couple of months and has been doing minimal cleaning and maintenance which has resulted in poor quality water and lots of algae.

Surprisingly his fish are still alive, which are kind of getting in the way.

I don;t want to scare or stress the fish during the process of cleaning it and re doing everything for it. Here is a picture of his tank. I have just gravel vaced probably 1/5 of the gunk and whatever other crap is at the bottom of his tank.

What should I do!? I am stuck and need some advice asap before something happen to his poor fish.



Many thanks!

 

[Scottyhorse]

Do you have a test kit? What size tank and what kind of fish?

 

[Robsterlobster9]

Do you have a test kit? What size tank and what kind of fish?

I have a ph test kit... It is an 80 liter tank with 2 gourami 4 neon tetra 2 of those see through eel type things 2 corydoras and 2 black widow tetras.

 

[Robsterlobster9]

Unfortunately I had to move the fish into a bucket in order to clean them tank out thoroughly, it would have caused the poor fishes too much stress trying to clean around them.

I have taken out everything including the background which won't be going back in. And have cleaned the gravel, and tank. And have started to fill it back up with water again.

The filter has new sponges in it; when I opened it up the old sponge was just sludge!

So yeah unfortunately the tank has to cycle again because it was too hard to ring it back up from the state it was in. I will post some pictures later!