# Tank Disaster ..rebuilding questions



## clock906 (Nov 22, 2007)

Just had a disaster with my 2.5 gallon tank housing a 8-10 wild guppy  

Everything was still well 3 days ago...I think the cause was because I changed my light from a household 13w sprial CF 2700K to a 18" 15w daylight fluorescent fixtures last week, which I though is better for the plants.

ever since changing the light, the hornwort which filled the tank was falling into pieces. I started noticing that a few days ago, but was too busy to do anything about, and I thought it is no big deal...

Yesterday morning...when I have a close look at the tank...i saw a bunch of pond snail "feeding" on a dead guppy. I took the dead bodies out, and did a very quick water change and rush to work.
After coming home from work, I went and take a look at how's the fish are doing, and I couldn't find any of them. I took the hornwort out to have a closer look at the tank.....ALL THE GUPPIES ARE GONE!!! They just sort of DISAPPEARED...no dead bodies. (There are probably 30+ pond snails in there tho)
Amazingly...I found 5 baby fry (<1mm) in there...still swimming around...quickly took them out of the tank and put them in a jug with freshwater. 1 died soon after, and the other 4 are still swimming the next morning..hope they will make it..

Now enough of my story and ranting...
my questions is I want to rebuild the tank, and throughly clean the substrate and get rid of all the snail...how should I go about doing that? There are probably 30+ pond snail in the gravel and it is impossible to pick them all out since the gravel is multi color. I am planning to rinse and "boil" the gravel. Does pond snail bodies "melt" with boiling water? Coz I am worried that the dead snail bodies might cause some harm or chemical problem in the future.


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## APB_admin (Mar 4, 2008)

My best advice to is to pick ou the snails and rinse the substrate thoroughly and hope all goes well.
________
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## Brian (Mar 14, 2006)

No... their bodies won't melt in boiling water, haha... but they might float up to the top when you boil the gravel.

Or you can just throw out the gravel and get a new bag, I doubt you have that much gravel to replace for a 2.5 gallon.


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

Sounds like you have bigger problems than snails...

You should have tested (or you should, if you still can) the water parameters etc. I'm willing to bet high levels of ammonia or something similar killed off your fishies.

Even the worst snails really only take over tanks that are overfed or neglected.

I'd suggest leaving the tank full, run the filter, do daily water changes and keep testing the water parameters until the the tank comes to point where it is running healthy again. Then think about adding some fishies in there.


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## clock906 (Nov 22, 2007)

Chris Stewart said:


> Sounds like you have bigger problems than snails...
> 
> You should have tested (or you should, if you still can) the water parameters etc. I'm willing to bet high levels of ammonia or something similar killed off your fishies.
> 
> ...


The snail was never a "problem", I just want to make sure they are gone since they multiply too fast.

The tank before the disaster had been established for 2 months with water change every 1 - 2 weeks...Nitrate used be around 10-20 and zero ammonia

Like I said earlier, I think it was the dying and decaying plant that set off the ammonia / water condition so quick (within a few days).

I emptied and washed the tank completely yesterday night already, and filled it all up with new water running the old filter.  The gravel is in a separate container filled with tap water and I am just deciding what to do with it.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

IMHO, changing the light in both intensity and color temp was the triggering point. As CS mentioned, w/o knwing water parameters prior to the change and the aftermath, we can only try to make reasonable assumptions.

The direction that I am leaning towards is that the hornwort "revved up" it's biological funtion due to a brighter and optimal color temperature. Typically inadequate buffer capacity and dissoved CO2 for a plant's carbon demand can potentially raise the pH to 10. When the lights are off, the plants reqpire, giving off CO2 dropping the pH. The unstable and extreme pH changes aren't going to make any fish happ in that environment, especially if the photoperiod remained the same. The "falling apart" is part in parcel to lack of other micro and macro nutrients to sustain it's energized state as well as the environmet that it had created.

Unfortunately, w/o knowing the water parameters and understanding how plants can influence the aquatic environment, the aforementioned is my guess to toss into the hat of possibilities.

What to do now? The possibilities are endless, only bound to it's sze and your imagination . LOL...my apologies, I'm not of much help there


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## Chris S (Dec 19, 2007)

clock906 said:


> The snail was never a "problem", I just want to make sure they are gone since they multiply too fast.
> 
> The tank before the disaster had been established for 2 months with water change every 1 - 2 weeks...Nitrate used be around 10-20 and zero ammonia
> 
> ...


In such small tanks, small changes can be drastic!

Likely, as mentioned, pH could have been a factor too. As you probably know, the change in one point in pH is huge. Despite fish being able to withstand certain swings in PH, the change from let's say, 7 pH to 8 pH is 10 times. 7 - 9 is 100 times. That can kill a fishie no problem 

Sorry for misreading your post, for some reason I thought you were concerned about the snails!

As for ridding yourself of snails...now is your chance to use some nasty snail killer (since you have no plants/fish)! Give it a couple days, then water change, water change, water change! I think the worst thing in those commercial snail killers is probably the high copper and water changes should eliminate any remnants of that by the time you introduce a new bioload.

Good luck!


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## dekstr (Oct 23, 2007)

Sorry to hear about your disaster.

First thing that points out when I read your story is the # of fish in a 2.5g.

IME 2.5g is a really small tank. Guppies can live there comfortably, but with 8-10 adults + fry, you are really pushing the tank's stability.

Excess # of pond snails is a sign of overfeeding. Combined w/ limited amount of water to help with maintaining stable water parameters, small changes can tip the balance to a disaster. Regardless of the cause, you will have to be more strict on tank maintenance in the future in high bioload, small tanks. Frequent water changes, strong filtration capacity. Preferably there should be high plant density, but with such a small tank, there won't be enough swimming room for the fish. So you have to have trade-offs, either less fish or bigger tank with more fast growing plants.

Also, with that amount of waste produced from fish and snails, it could deteriorate your water quality very quickly. Plant uptake of nutrients might not be enough to handle the amount of waste in the water.

Another factor is that with snails overpopulating your tank, their impact on the bioload is underrated. They can also reduce your water hardness / pH as their shells accumulate calcium and other minerals.


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## Brian (Mar 14, 2006)

When I read it the closest thing I could come to was Wilson's response with the transpiration... I can't even remember if that's what its called, havn't looked at it since first year bio.


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## clock906 (Nov 22, 2007)

The tank didn't seem over populated...(the guppy I have is the smaller wild guppy...most are less than 1/3 the size of the other fancy guppy I have in another tank, the typical one u see in LFS)
But I will probably just leave the remaining survivors (4 fry) in the tank from now on to keep the bio load down.

I know how things can change very rapidly in a small tank..only thing I didn't understand was why the plants (hornwort) died so quickly when I change the light (to something that is supposed to be 'better' for growing plants!!)


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## Brian (Mar 14, 2006)

As Wilson explained, the upgrade in lights allowed the hornwort to thrive better but since it was in such a short period of time, they would go through the light reactions quicker and hence at night, they would release more CO2 during the dark reactions and the increase in CO2 might have gave a sharp rise in pH which could have killed your fish.


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## Darkblade48 (Jan 28, 2008)

Just to clarify, the pH will rise when the lights are on, and the Hornwort is actively consuming CO2.

When the lights are off and the Hornwort begins to respire, rather than photosynthesize, then the increase in CO2 levels will lower the pH.


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