The dangers of water changes. I tripped over the hose whilst filling the tank up and bashed my hand on wood stand. Ow!
The dangers of water changes!
- Thread starter The Masked Shadow
- Start date
My indoor pond had a 3 ft area right at the back which was covered by decking and housed the filters and houseplants. However the only way to get to it is to crawl 7 ft across a builders plank over the rest of the pond.
It’s been built for 10 years and I have been doing this every 2weeks to clean the mechanical filter portion at the top of the 3ft box pond filter.
Well, after 10 years I had not realised that the 6”x 4” support beam holding the decking and filter had rotted through and just a few weeks ago whilst performing a filter change at night with a torch I had crawled to the decked area when crack!
I was suddenly in my pond fully dressed, the filter was in with me, the builders plank, the beam , the decked area, the houseplants, everything, all in the pond, and as I went in I must have hit every cactus I kept on decked area too as we all went in.
I have been pulling cactus spines out of my hands for 2 weeks. It took me a day to get everything back out of the pond with nowhere to move the stock to, and took me two days to find my glasses!
the pond after 3 days having had plants and the filter dumped into it.
The pond after filtering through a new crystal clean filter for 1week.
After cleaning all the sludge from the new filter and a further 2weeks running it and the obvious couple of water changes ( which is not easy and is expensive when the water has to come from the tap and be heated/treated and takes around 6 hrs to replace 400gal (25%).
Fish don’t seem to have noticed the event , other than it’s now a lot lighter at the far end of the pond where all the cats used to hide during the day. Although I did have to ensure aeration was increased significantly over the period the filter was being dragged out, cleaned and replaced as all the bacterial sludge that was in the bottom of it beneath the trickle section and return pipes ended up in the pond and no one could see anything. Didn’t seem to stop the black shark chasing anyone he came across!
It’s been built for 10 years and I have been doing this every 2weeks to clean the mechanical filter portion at the top of the 3ft box pond filter.
Well, after 10 years I had not realised that the 6”x 4” support beam holding the decking and filter had rotted through and just a few weeks ago whilst performing a filter change at night with a torch I had crawled to the decked area when crack!
I was suddenly in my pond fully dressed, the filter was in with me, the builders plank, the beam , the decked area, the houseplants, everything, all in the pond, and as I went in I must have hit every cactus I kept on decked area too as we all went in.
I have been pulling cactus spines out of my hands for 2 weeks. It took me a day to get everything back out of the pond with nowhere to move the stock to, and took me two days to find my glasses!
the pond after 3 days having had plants and the filter dumped into it.
The pond after filtering through a new crystal clean filter for 1week.
After cleaning all the sludge from the new filter and a further 2weeks running it and the obvious couple of water changes ( which is not easy and is expensive when the water has to come from the tap and be heated/treated and takes around 6 hrs to replace 400gal (25%).
Fish don’t seem to have noticed the event , other than it’s now a lot lighter at the far end of the pond where all the cats used to hide during the day. Although I did have to ensure aeration was increased significantly over the period the filter was being dragged out, cleaned and replaced as all the bacterial sludge that was in the bottom of it beneath the trickle section and return pipes ended up in the pond and no one could see anything. Didn’t seem to stop the black shark chasing anyone he came across!
I nominate this for Thread Of The Year. Had to wait till I stopped laughing before I could post.
Sorry for your misfortune, but thanks for displaying the courage to make it humorous!
Sorry for your misfortune, but thanks for displaying the courage to make it humorous!
We all learn by our experiences and our stupidity but at this rate I’ll be confirmed fully stupid with no learning left to do by the time I hit 52.
I swear that this hobby will be the death of me!
I swear that this hobby will be the death of me!
In a reef tank…be careful where you put your corals - especially the ones with a strong sting. I had to give up cleaning algae in the bottom right of my tank, because between the torch coral and the clownfish it’s just much more pain than it’s worth.
And my other story - don’t lean over the edge of the tank…especially an old one. My old 55 had been up over 10 years, and probably had much more stress than it should have.
Anyway, the tank had enough of existing and later that night I hear a large crack…and think nothing of it.
Even later I notice the lid isn’t on it right, and the whole front is bowing forward. The center brace snapped:
This picture was after it was fixed back into place - it was 2 inches off at its worst (a lot on a 12 inch tank). Needless to say it was upgrade time. Moral of the story - when cleaning a tank, don’t lean your entire body weight on it…but if you do, you get an upgrade…so maybe it’s not such a bad thing ?
And my other story - don’t lean over the edge of the tank…especially an old one. My old 55 had been up over 10 years, and probably had much more stress than it should have.
Anyway, the tank had enough of existing and later that night I hear a large crack…and think nothing of it.
Even later I notice the lid isn’t on it right, and the whole front is bowing forward. The center brace snapped:
This picture was after it was fixed back into place - it was 2 inches off at its worst (a lot on a 12 inch tank). Needless to say it was upgrade time. Moral of the story - when cleaning a tank, don’t lean your entire body weight on it…but if you do, you get an upgrade…so maybe it’s not such a bad thing ?
True dangers of water changers
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Water changes can be hazardous to my fish. I was doing a water change and was in another room when I took a call. My husband starting bringing in firewood and stacking it next to the wood stove in the living room. There was a thump with every piece of firewood he stacked. Fifteen minutes later, call finished, I discovered my husband had not been in the living at all. 
Our poor fish had been flopping around on the dry floor of their tank for at least 15 minutes. The fish were bleeding and one was unresponsive. We refill the tank by pumping water in via the mechanical filtration plumbing. Because there was no water in the tank, we were unable to quickly pump in the water and had to resort to buckets to partially refill the tank until we could pump water in. I was hysterical knowing I had just killed my poor fish. Both fish ate less than an hour later, relieving me of the guilt I had. Very very glad that pacu are resilient, strong hardy fish. I still get distracted doing water changes - last week I managed to overflow the 55 gallon holding tank twice. Now excuse me, I have to do a water change.
Our poor fish had been flopping around on the dry floor of their tank for at least 15 minutes. The fish were bleeding and one was unresponsive. We refill the tank by pumping water in via the mechanical filtration plumbing. Because there was no water in the tank, we were unable to quickly pump in the water and had to resort to buckets to partially refill the tank until we could pump water in. I was hysterical knowing I had just killed my poor fish. Both fish ate less than an hour later, relieving me of the guilt I had. Very very glad that pacu are resilient, strong hardy fish. I still get distracted doing water changes - last week I managed to overflow the 55 gallon holding tank twice. Now excuse me, I have to do a water change.
Water changes can be hazardous to my fish. I was doing a water change and was in another room when I took a call. My husband starting bringing in firewood and stacking it next to the wood stove in the living room. There was a thump with every piece of firewood he stacked. Fifteen minutes later, call finished, I discovered my husband had not been in the living at all.
Wow, that one sure hits a nerve. I had similar situations occur more than once back in the day; I seem to have a surprisingly short attention span when it comes to keeping track of water levels during changes.
Most of my tanks have dedicated drains through which water is removed during routine changes, and nowadays I install all these drains several inches above the floor of the tanks so that it is impossible for the water to drain completely dry. The next step is to install float switches to shut off incoming water to avoid the dreaded overflows that were also regular occurrences.Generally speaking, starting a water change is never the problem for me; it's stopping the water change at the correct time that seems to trip me up...