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total aquarium kill

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Mari's dad had a near total aquarium kill incident. He called up for some advice. I mentioned a few things (through Mari) but re-capped that in an email as follows.

All of my aquarium disasters happened in the summer. What I think happens is this:

1. The water temperature goes up.

2. There's an increase in algae and some of the plants begin to suffer/fall apart.

3. Ammonia goes up, everything falls apart.

The only thing(s) your dad can do are:

a. Keep fewer fish/shrimp. The maximum of 30 tetras might be right for an aquarium with 60cm x 30cm surface area and a deep design. But that would require a constant temperature and so on, and lots of filtration and no gravel or plants. Your dad has gravel and lots of plants, so I would suggest 15 fish that size, maximum. But you have to take away the size of the pleco, say one tetra for every 2cm of pleco.

b. More water changes in the summer.

c. Don't overdo it with the chemicals. Usually disease is treated in fish by transporting them to a secondary hospital aquarium (a small aquarium like I used to keep) and putting the medicine into that.

d. Take care, when cleaning the filters, not to use fresh tap water; it has chlorine and maybe ammonia that will kill all the beneficial bacteria in the filters.

At this point, I would leave the aquarium alone for a while. No new chemicals, but do water changes (maybe 10%) 2x a week for a while. If more fish die, there might be disease present in the aquarium.