Saturday, August 20, 2011

Tales from the Tank #17

Water Water Everywhere

It's been while since I've had anything to write about. No big adventures or interesting things...until this past week.

Last Saturday we adopted two plecos from an ad on craigslist. The first new addition went into the 29 gallon Goldfish tank (which was looking kinda green), and the second went into the 37 gallon Angel tank. They have done an amazing job cleaning up the algae.

We haven't done any tank cleaning for about a month, so Monday I ran out and got filters and then after dinner we began the monthly ritual of cleaning tanks. We started with the Goldfish, and everything went just fine.

Then we moved the operation upstairs. Normally we siphon about 25-35% of the water (while cleaning up the poop and leftover food), but since we never really cleaned the 55 after we got it, I took it down to a 50% water level. Terry has started just suctioning the water and letting it run into the tub (cuz the process goes faster). So once the 55 was done, I moved out into the living room to start the community tank.  We got started siphoning and the next think I know, Terry is yelling to shut the siphon off....the bathroom is flooding!

And when I say "flooding", this wasn't like before, this was a full on flood with at least an inch of water on the floor.  "Grab towels" he yelled.  Thank goodness I had the foresight to take a day of vacation and get all the towels in the house washed, because we used about 10.  The rugs were wet, the carpet in the hall was wet and then I went downstairs.  Did I mention wanting to go to bed early? (yeah right).

It was like a rain forest downstairs. There was water dripping from the ceiling in two rooms. Water puddled in my sewing box, water on the floor in two rooms and running down the walls. We figure the hose popped out of the tub for about four minutes.  Let me tell you, four minutes of dirty fish water is a lot of water. 

Once the water was cleaned up, I sprayed the floor with Clorox Cleanup and wiped it up again. Terry is running around cursing..."how in the #$% did this happen? I was only out of the bathroom for a minute!"

Oh well. got the mess cleaned up and started to fill the tanks back up. Filled the 40 and then the 55. Got the chemicals added and was starting to put away the filters and supplies when we noticed the Tiger barb in the 55 swimming erratically and one of the tetras was swimming sideways.  Then to my horror....Hoover, the albino pleco was belly up on the bottom of the tank. 

"What the heck?" Terry!!!! the fish are dying!  "Did you put the chemical in" he asked. "of course I did". So we went back and forth a bit on who did what...but in the end we had to say goodbye to Hoover, Tiger and one of the red tetras and send them to the big pond in the sky.

After talking with a pet professional, seems that taking the tank down to 50% change out and then adding back the water so fast may have shocked my favorite pleco and Terry's Tiger who would nibble on your fingers if you put them in his way.

It was a sad night Monday.

1 comment:

  1. Doing a little catching up...so sorry....about the loss of the fish and the flood..... we had one here too awhile ago...man we love our fish!

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