likadeefeesh Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 So I moved house over the weekend and had some biiiig drama's over moving my tank. Long story short, After relentless rain and hours in the Emergeny ward at the hospital...the tank is finally in. YAY! All was good.... I didn't put the decorations in straight away as there was too much stuff everywhere in the house, but put them in yesterday arvo. (by the way the Anubias plant was left out of water for 2 days. shrivelled.) Almost as soon as the plant and pvc caves went in I saw some weird behaviour in the fish...take it out or not? I thought I'd sleep on it. This morning I removed my dead holding female a little fry and my prize male Cobalt. I am about to go home and I'm expecting the whole tank to be dead. I removed the decorations again this morning ofcourse. It could be an ammonia spike I suppose as I had to remove all the gravel etc...but the filter was never drained and was full of old tank water....Or it could be a bug of some kind? I noticed a bit more flashing than usual? I guess the moral is....don't assume it'll be ok!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robfishfan Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 you must bring as much of the water as you can , lots of buckets or garbage bins , or have you friends look after your fish in there tank until yours is ready , you can not move ciclids or usually any other fish straight to a new tank just set up with fresh water from the tap , its way too cold , they get white spot and shock and die , we are water keeper first , fish is second . any filter turned off the bacteria starts dying straight away, takes weeks to rebuild again . water must be aged , alive , warm . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 After a few hours the bacteria in your filters would be dead or close to it. Not cleaning them out, before you added them back to your tank, would be a major factor in whats gone wrong IMHO Josh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D6C1 Posted June 2, 2009 Share Posted June 2, 2009 Whats been said... I hope you didnt lose anything by the time you got home! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
likadeefeesh Posted June 3, 2009 Author Share Posted June 3, 2009 I got home to find 3 more fish dead, and a very suspect looking worm thing on the glass! It was a small red worm, looked kind of like a blood worm but half the size, lighter in color and rather plump. I pulled about 3 or 4 more of these things out of the tank since. I don't know what this is but it has nailed all my fish in 2 days. Water Par's are good, and the water was aged and heated before any of the fish went in. I used Cycle and Prime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noddy65 Posted June 3, 2009 Share Posted June 3, 2009 Overnight seems way too quick for an ammonia spike, particulalry if the water was all new. Unless the new water already had ammonia? Sounds to me like a toxin? Perhaps leached from all the dead bacteria in the filter? or even something that was sprayed in the new house (fly spray, cochroach killer?) and somehow got into the tank...either while it was uncovered or maybe even on the ornaments? Many tanks have little worms etc in the gravel...most are harmless..do you feed frozen blood worms by any chance? Whatever the cause its a bugger Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
genetik_defekt Posted June 3, 2009 Share Posted June 3, 2009 you can stop us all guessing by telling us how long the filter was off, but full of old tank water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
likadeefeesh Posted June 3, 2009 Author Share Posted June 3, 2009 Thanks all, I appreciate everyone's guestimates! I'm not actually after an explanation Yippee, I think either way I know I have done something wrong in this process but my brain was kind of addled so it doesn't surprise me. The filter was off for about 24 hours, still full of the old tank water. I wanted to give it a clean as it was already out but didn't have the time. I think I may know what caused these worms though...I realised that I put gravel in the tank that had been sitting on the balcony in a bucket for a couple of weeks. There would have been a tiny bit of water in the bucket as it's hard to completely drain. My theory is that something grew in the bucket and then was of course transferred into the tank. (I didn't rinse the gravel first...as I said...FRIED BRAIN!) Thanks again though all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noddy65 Posted June 3, 2009 Share Posted June 3, 2009 The worms are probably Midge Larvae. Does it look like this? http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/image...reams/midge.jpg Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
likadeefeesh Posted June 4, 2009 Author Share Posted June 4, 2009 Thanks Mike, that looks like them! Do they get inside the fish? I noticed one of my yellows cough one of the worm things up...gross...evil lil buggers. As of today I still have 3 fish alive and they seem to be returning to normal behaviour!? See how we go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
genetik_defekt Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 it was the filter that killed them mate. never ever leave a filter off for 24 hours. all the bacteria would have died, this is what killed your fish. even if you had washed the filter out they still would have died though, you cant just dump fish in new tank water. leeson learned for next time though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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