dead tank in one night!!!

[x_tra]

i have in my home alot of tanks but seem to only have problems with 2 of them my large 29 gallon community tank and my 10 gallon baby tank i dont know what happened to them but it happened at the same time...over night the tanks got extremely cloudy and in the morning all my babies were dead and in the other tank all but 12 were dead so what happened to my tanks??

(just to let you know i completely cleaned both tanks and 10 of the 12 are alive , happy, heathy, and breeding)

 

[lmw80]

Had you checked your levels before this happened? PH, Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite. If so, what were the levels? Also, how often did you do water changes to the tanks - how much water did you change and did you vacuum and if so how much at a time? My first instinct would tell me an algae bloom, but there may be an underlying problem here.

I think those are my only questions for now

 

[x_tra]

level on eveything were fine.... i do water changes 3 in two weeks about 20%-30% and yes i vacuum

 

[e-cat]

i dont think cleaning out your tank completly was a smart thing, it may solve the problem for now because the water is clean but it will get clowdy again and you most likely lost you bacteria colonies.

 

[x_tra]

how would cleaning them be wrong?? i wanted to make sure that everything in there was dead....but before i did it i did take all the fish out that were alive.. and of course it will get cloudy again when it cycles but that is not why it got that way in the first place since they had 6months before it happened .... and im ok with it taking however long it will take to cycle again

 

[Allivymar]

Just keep a very close eye on your water parameters; it sounds as if your tanks had a mini-cycle.

Not sure why...maybe a couple fish died and it threw off all the levels, which then affected the rest of the fish? Unusual to happen in 2 tanks at the same time but... Could also have been a product of over feeding, a small child dumping something in the tank, or if you happened to have water changed just those 2 tanks within a day or so, could even be something in your water supply. Difficult to say, especially without knowing the water parameters.

Cleaning it all out most likely destroyed your nitrifying bacterial colony and chances are its going to cycle from scratch. Those levels of ammonia and nitrite may wind up stressing or killing the rest, so test often and be prepared to water change often

 

[e-cat]

how would cleaning them be wrong?? i wanted to make sure that everything in there was dead....but before i did it i did take all the fish out that were alive.. and of course it will get cloudy again when it cycles but that is not why it got that way in the first place since they had 6months before it happened .... and im ok with it taking however long it will take to cycle again

you never said what your fish looked like so one could have died then being in a small tank poisoned the water and caused and amonia spike and with the baby fish tank you never said how many babys where in it and the tank is only a 10 gallon , with all my fish that have bred there where hundreds of babys , they may be same but stil creat a lot of watse.
and you ask how would cleaning out a fish tank be wrong? well you should know the ansewer, but since you dont let me enlighten you, it will kill of your bacterial colonies and now your tank has too cycle which may kill the rest of you fish.

 

[x_tra]

all the fish looked fine and nothing had died and in the baby tank were just babys that i had saved from the big tank there were only 14 1/2 or less.... you must not read that well cuz i dont care about the cycle if it has to do it again and i know that i killed all the bacteria in the tanks but i do not have a problem with that... both tanks have cycled all ready (i cleaned them on the 13 of aug) but i just wanted to know what happened to the tanks in the first place

 

[Guest]

HEY!

Everybody chill, please.

This is a friendly place, no need for any one to get testy. We will NOT have flame wars here. This stuff keeps up and I'll lock the thread.

Now, back on topic. xtra, I doubt we will be able to give you a definitive answer to the reason this occurred. I've never experienced anything like this, so I don't know, but Allivmar listed some possibilities above, they are good guesses.

Everybody else, if xtra wishes to clean and start over on his cycle, it's his perogitive.