# dead tank after water change



## fubujubu (Jan 10, 2011)

Well i have no idea whats going on with my tank but here goes. Late saturday i did a 25% water change on my community 46g bowfront. Its a planted tank with a dual biowheel filter (forget which one exactly) and a ehiem that where both cleaned two weeks ago. After i did the change i noticed the water was murky. Its a white murky not a brown or green. Didnt think much of it at the time and figured itd clear itself up. Late sunday i noticed it was still murky and every fish in the tank was gasping for air at the surface if they werent dead already. I saved what i could in another tank which i havent cleaned yet. tonight i decided to clean Out the filters and drain the tank. I noticed that the filters had a white scummy substance in them and the pads smelt like bad eggs or swamp. I also drained the tank and refilled ot only to find it cloudy again... Anybody got any ideas on whats going on? Something in the tap water?? Or has something else happened

Yes i posted a brick since im on a phone


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

You said that you cleaned both the biowheel filter and the eheim at the same time? You might've forced your tank to re-cycle and caused a bacterial bloom.

You should test the water for ammonia/nitrite/nitrate, it would give you a better answer.


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## fubujubu (Jan 10, 2011)

It happened after only the water change. I didnt touch the filters at all till today. Figured i either didnt get it all out of them or its in my tap water. I dont imagin a reboot could happen with a 25% change its never happened before. I ment to get it tested since my kits empty but i forgot my sample at home since i was in a rush to get to worl today


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## pat3612 (Jan 29, 2008)

If if smells like rotten eggs it could be sulfur in your tap water , how did you clean the filters.


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## fubujubu (Jan 10, 2011)

I kinda thought the same but would it leave whats almost like a white slime in the filters? I just wash em out with hot water and scrubed all the tubing and insides. Changed a carbon pads and all that jazz too. Had a theory come up tho. I think that somehow i had a bacteria or something start growing in one of the filters. By adding the water and pouring it near a inlet for the hanging filter this could have added to the force of water traveling into the filter causing the growth of lets call it crud to come loose and pollute the tank. This sound plausible to anybody? Would mean that i didnt clean the filters out or missed a spot causing it to happen again..


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

fubujubu said:


> I kinda thought the same but would it leave whats almost like a white slime in the filters? I just wash em out with hot water and scrubed all the tubing and insides. Changed a carbon pads and all that jazz too. Had a theory come up tho. I think that somehow i had a bacteria or something start growing in one of the filters. By adding the water and pouring it near a inlet for the hanging filter this could have added to the force of water traveling into the filter causing the growth of lets call it crud to come loose and pollute the tank. This sound plausible to anybody? Would mean that i didnt clean the filters out or missed a spot causing it to happen again..


No, I don't think that's plausible.

Most likely you had something in your water that was toxic and it killed your biofilter (the bacteria on your pads). The rotten eggs smell comes from decomposition, which means the biofilter on your pads died.

Either this triggered a massive ammonia spike that killed your fish, or the toxin in your water just took longer to kill them.


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## fubujubu (Jan 10, 2011)

Thanks for the help everyone. Problem is still persiting.. 

got a test done and is as follows
Nitrite-0ppm
ammonia-.25
Nitrates-0ppm
temp -82
PH-7.6


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

wow that is a massive die off.. O_O i am so sorry that happened. 

Did you have a power out and the filters failed to restart? I only get freaky stink from my turtles when something like scouts clog up the filter ... yuk.


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## fubujubu (Jan 10, 2011)

Nope everthings been running. Just happend after a routine water change and cleaning of my filters. Dont know whats doing it since the ammonia isnt high enough to be this lethal I dont think

iv lost 9 cardinals, 2 angels, two blue rams, 4 guppys, 2 bushy nose plecos, a clown pleco, one flying fox and 11 ammano shrimp. If that wasnt bad enough all my plants are pretty much dead. Complete tank loss.


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## mousey (Mar 28, 2011)

Been there and had this once before right after water change.
Found that the ammonia and chlorine injection process at the town water supply had misfired and added too much ammonia etc.
Course the town never fesses up but when you find a bunch of people in the petshops replacing dead fish from the same time period you know something happened. In york region you can go to the website and find the water reports and any screw ups-- unfortunatley the reports are not current but a couple of years behind. Guess they don't want to be sued.


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## Ralfie Boy (Apr 18, 2011)

I had the same problem. I traced it back to the wooden hood that came with the stand. It was leaching resin into the tank. You could also have added too much chlorine remover.

Sorry for your loss.


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## destructo (Aug 12, 2009)

Sorry to hear of your loss. I also had a event similar to yours. I traced mine back to an issue with Purigen and the water conditioner I was using at the time. It had caused a big change in the water and a domino effect on the fish. 

What substrate are you using?


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## mwerneburg (Aug 20, 2012)

fubujubu said:


> Well i have no idea whats going on with my tank but here goes. Late saturday i did a 25% water change on my community 46g bowfront. Its a planted tank with a dual biowheel filter (forget which one exactly) and a ehiem that where both cleaned two weeks ago. After i did the change i noticed the water was murky. Its a white murky not a brown or green. Didnt think much of it at the time and figured itd clear itself up. Late sunday i noticed it was still murky and every fish in the tank was gasping for air at the surface if they werent dead already. I saved what i could in another tank which i havent cleaned yet. tonight i decided to clean Out the filters and drain the tank. I noticed that the filters had a white scummy substance in them and the pads smelt like bad eggs or swamp. I also drained the tank and refilled ot only to find it cloudy again... Anybody got any ideas on whats going on? Something in the tap water?? Or has something else happened


I've had a similar week. I didn't have cloudy water but something threw the system completely out of whack after a water change on the 28th. By Sep 2 I'd lost five emperor tetras, a clown loach, and an SAE that was probably 6-7 years old. At first I thought I was dealing with velvet. I've never had velvet break out before, but had some Maracide on hand. The velvet didn't respond to the Maracide at all. The SAE didn't have velvet but instead seemed to be suffering from NTD (which may have been transmitted to the aquarium when I brought a survivor of an NTD outbreak in a tetra tank to this one a month ago).

In summary; I assume that the water quality had gone very wrong. I do ~8% water changes three times a week. I live in the Beaches. I use Seachem "Prime" to treat the tap water.


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## Zebrapl3co (Mar 29, 2006)

fubujubu said:


> I kinda thought the same but would it leave whats almost like a white slime in the filters? I just wash em out with hot water and scrubed all the tubing and insides. Changed a carbon pads and all that jazz too. ...


Not exactly sure what you mean by that, because you didn't say it explicitly. But you never clean your biomedia or sponge filter with hot water. It just kills a hord of bacteria that will set off a chain reation of die off in the tank. This in turn will cycle our tank. So the first thing you should look into is what you did when you clean your filters.
The correct way is to rinse your filter media and sponge in either old tank water or treated de-chlore water. Most people simply syphone the tanks water into a bucket and clean their filters media and sponge there. Then they just dump the bucket of water and put the filter back in. This is because you want to keep the good bacteria in your filter media and/or sponge. You just want to get rid of some of the crap that's been cloggin up your filter. The good bacteria is also what's been filtering your water of harmful chemicals that can hurt your fish.

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