Tank meltdown...ever happen to you?

[shawmutt]

Well, I'm in the process of setting up my third tank. It seems my tanks do very well for a while, but after 8-9 months my tanks crash. First my Amazon black-water tank crashed because I didn't QT some hatchets and they killed off my entire cardinal tetra population with ich, and then I got the "cute blue cichlids" (kenyiis) my wife wanted--and that started my African rift tank down the path of destruction. I learned two things:

1. QT new fish!!!
2. Don't let other people impulse buy for you--my wife is trying it again with those darn dwarf puffers she's obsessing about. "You are making an Indian biotope, and puffers are from India, so...". Thank goodness they aren't readily available, or else I may come home to find puffers munching on my danios

Anyone else learned a lesson from a meltdown?

 

[TankGirl]

Oh yeah! Quarrantine new fish is probably the biggest lessson learned - that can save a world of hurt.

The other thing I have learned is that puffers are great in species-only tanks - biotope and puffers should not be in the same sentence, LOL!

I'll bet there are lots of stories like this - great thread, shawmutt

 

[cheezysquirrelz]

Thats awful. I first started the hobby with a betta I got from friends. Then my mom and I were at walmart and bought a tank kit for him months later. My mom swore it was a 10 gal and I overstocked it(even for a 10gal) It turned out it was actually a 5gal. So all that time I overdosed on meds and such and I had wondered why I had lost SO many fish.

 

[cheezysquirrelz]

BTW, whats a black-water tank?

 

[shawmutt]

BTW, whats a black-water tank?

I wrote an article on black-water tanks about a year and a half ago on here, but I tried to search for it and couldn't find it :|. I guess it was deleted off the server. Basically, a black-water tank has very soft, very acidic, tea-colored water. I have a picture in my gallery. As you can see, it's very dingy and dark. If you look really close you can see little splashes of color--those were my cardinal tetras. They shone light little LEDs in that dark tank.

 

[Menagerie]

I have not had a meltdown yet, but since joining this site, I do QT all new fish!

 

[oscarbreeder]

I had sort of a meltdown years ago when I first started.
I didnt know alot about the different types of fish and put a yellow lab cichlid in my community tank ...OUCH!!

I soon had only a yellow lab...

 

[cginflorida]

My first tank (10 gal) had a meltdown because I stopped doing regular water changes and testing, due to laziness on my part. Naturally, I lost all my fish - not all at once, but one by one. I didn't quarantine either, but I was lucky and didn't bring home any disease.

None of that will happen again (the laziness part). I just wish my QT would finish cycling so I could get more fish! Patience is the hardest part of this hobby.

 

[William]

I had a nulti-tank biological holocaust a few months back.

Always wanted an albino female betta, finally found one and brought her home. Excitement and impulse lead to no QT, 3 days later ALL my beautiful females in teh tank were dead.

the day after that, the male betta that was in the tank below them died.


I lost like.. 99% of my Betta's with that little incident, only one I have left is my first female.

Shes enjoying her fat little self in the 30gal community.

 

[Madame_X]

I haven't had a complete meltdown (thanks in large part to the advice I received here when I was a newbie--AND BioSpira!) but I've certainly had a few scares.

For example, I'm hoping that another fish doesn't come down with the columnaris that killed my hatchet and my ram. It's been a little over two weeks since I found the ram had it, and he was only 2 days after the hatchet so I'm hopeful that I've got it under control.

It certainly is scary, though.