ArtesiaWells
Aquarium Advice Addict
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2012
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- 1,392
So, is it safe to say I wasn't truly alone in this tank crash disaster where I needed to start over from scratch?
You are not alone here!!!
I had a 20 gallon tank that had been set up in my room since as long as I can remember. Then I ha it crash because I had a shy fish that I didn't see very often die in an ornament and I couldn't see it inside and didn't notice it missing because it rarely came out. The ammonia from the decomposing fish killed almost all my other fish. Only one survived. Transferred him to my 10 gallon and took down my 20. It has yet to be set up again and it was a couple years ago. Fortunately I got a 55 gal and have that up an running for a year.
About 6 months ago, I lost my baby boy, Augustus. He was a huge, gorgeous orange and white oranda. To this day, we still have no idea what actually made him ill and his only tank mate, a brown oranda named Hans, won't accept any other fish for longer than a month or two. I think he misses Augustus as much as we do. I recently drew a cartoon of Augustus for a mural at my work and it's really helped me feel better
Someone poisoned my Koi pond before with soap.. I guess that is related to your story. After I scooped out some expensive dead Koi, I put feeder goldies in it. After 2 years, its infested with them now, I'm planning to clean it out, sell the goldies and put more Koi in it using the money from the goldies.
ArtesiaWells said:Hey Sssea,
Thanks so much for sharing your (heartbreaking) experience in this thread -- I am so sorry for your loss; I know how that feels, believe me...your guy Augustus was adorable! Very much like our "Oscar" and "Sunshine," the Chocolate Fantail and Red Cap Oranda we lost in this bacterial infection outbreak; I know how you feel...
Can you give me some more details as far as what you mean by Hans "won't accept any other fish for longer than a month or two"? Does he fight with them? Do you have any pics of Hans? I'd love to see a brown Oranda!
I'm working on redoing the landscaping in the tank.
I've tried 4 fish as possible tank mates for Hans since we lost Augustus. The first was around the same size, maybe slightly smaller than Hans. They immediately began to fight, even before the new guy was done acclimating in the bag. It was terrifying. I had done everything right, even rearranged the decor. I gave it 3 days to settle down before I returned the new fish. It was a disaster. I had never seen such violence with my darling little creatures.
The second fish, Birdie, was much smaller, in hopes that Hans wouldn't feel intimidated and need to defend himself. It went very well for about a month, until I came home one day to find Birdie torn to shreds and barely holding on. He was still picking on her relentlessly, so I removed her immediately and rehomed her. It was heartbreaking, I was so attached to that little girl. (Keep in mind, all of these genders are just guesses, we have no idea what they actually were/are.)
It's been mostly the same story, now I have Gustavo in with him. It's been around 2 months and I sometimes notice Hans will give him a go, but nothing too bad. I'm always vigilant for the day he decides to snap though. I know he's kind of a terror, but I love him so much that I'm willing to put up with his bullying streak.
This seems, from my research at least, to be pretty uncommon amongst normally peaceful goldies. We like to think that Augustus was his true love and no fish will ever live up to him
This is the two of them together, what seems like ages ago.
One day my son pointed out that there was something wrong with the fish in his 10g we had set up just a few weeks before. I thought it was ich. So, unable to raise the temp, I went out and bought some ich med and treated the tank. The snails that were in the tank I took out and put in a little 3g. The next day, what ever was going on had changed. No longer looked like ich, but instead the fish had what looked like peeling skin. I did immediate back to back water changes to get as much medication out that I could. At this point a few of the fish had already died. After a few days of doing water change after water change, we took the remaining 3 platies (down from a total of 7, one of them had been pregnant too) and put them along with the 4 snails into the 3g. The 3 fish seemed to heal up in the smaller tank and I scrubbed down the 10 and every thing in it, including the filter and media. Sadly another one died. I put the remaining 2 fish and the snails back in the 10. A few days later another fish died. One by one we've also lost most of the snails. We now are down to 1 platy and 1 snail.
Before I scrubbed the tank down, I realized what was going on. One night I got done doing a water change on my other tanks. it was late and I left my gravel vac sitting in my tub. The next morning I got up late for work and instead of properly taking care of the vac, I left it in there. A few hours later my son did a water change and didn't rinse the vac off first. Soap was introduced into the tank. The wc was done on Saturday. We noticed something wrong on Monday. Treated it for ich Tuesday. Didn't take the poor fish out until Thursday.
I wasn't necessarily attached to these fish yet as we'd only had them a few weeks. But it did highly discourage my son and he has lost interest, at least for now while there are other things to do during the summer. The poor 10g, a mouth or 6 weeks later, has one platy I've named "suds" and an ivory mystery snail i've named "slippery". I joke with my kids that I've named them that because they survived the "great soap attack of 2012"!
Through this I've decided a few things (and with your experience too Artesia)
1) the importance of not cutting corners! Any time I pick up that gravel vac to do water changes it gets rinsed off with HOT water, regardless. And make a set schedule for maintenance, and exactly what you are doing. This week I'll gravel vac the right side, next week I'll gravel vac the other or something like that.
2) if my fish get sick again, I will do a 100% wc and inspect the tank closer. Even of that means pulling out some of the deco and/or substrate