Well, it began with my grandmother getting a pet goldfish, she put him in a 20 gallon, too small already. She bought three more and an albino Cory sold to her as an algae eater." I thought oh crap, the bioloads gonna be huge in that tank, I should probably say something"! Well anyway I felt bad about saying anything so I didn't, until I came back again for another visit, and saw the tank, cloudy as ever, and told her she should probably do water changes a wee little more often. I came back today and saw the tank and thought "that's enough, i'm gonna have to do something about this", I spent 2 hours doing multiple water changes on a tank you wouldn't believe! The main substrate in that bowl of death was poop and algae, you couldn't see to the back of an already small enough tank, filter cartridges were absolutely nasty, and didn't have a chiller or anything in the tank! I'm surprised the goldfish hadn't died from the 80 degree water, but also from the 300 nitrates as well, the tank was covered in algae and black beard brush to the extent that you could barely get a glimpse at the fish, much less through the cloudy water with poop floating everywhere! I drained, filled, drained and filled the tank till there wasn't much poop left and I could actually see the fish! After all that I had a LONG talk with her on aquarium care and asked if she could drive the both of us down to a big box fish store and I could help her buy some necessary equipment. She eventually confessed as to not knowing what a water change was, (it's sorta obvious lol) and to feeding huge pinches of low quality flake twice a day, everyday, as well as not knowing any basic care on fish pretty much whatsoever. Lesson learned, tell your relatives (if they have tanks) about fish care even if it does sound a little crititive!
