fumigating house, what to do with fish.

[ehh]

the only thing i would feel comfortable doing is taking the fish out of the house. scary stuff.

 

[celebrist]

One of my children kindly braught bed bugs home from school a few years ago. We had the house treated with heat remuneration (they raise the surface temp of your home to like 140 degrees or so do not remember exact temp for 24 hours). Needless to say I could not leave my tanks in the house and at the time I had 12 or 13 running.

So I hit walmart and baught a bunch of hard plastic tubs of varying sizes (no clear ones figured darker the better for the fish). I set all of them up under the big oak in my backyard to keep them out of direct sunlight. Then ran a heavy duty extension cord out from my garage with a 3 port splitter and 3 large powerstrips. ( I put all the electric stuff under an upside down 55gallon in case of rain moved all heaters and filter outside then the fish. Covered all of my containers with plywood(to prevent jumping) then a tarp (to prevent contamination birds ect). Than drained all my tanks so they wouldnt boil.

Then the wife and I pitched a tent next to the containers and grilled ribeyes and drank beer for the next 24 hours. We only had one problem at some point in the night my heaters flipped a breaker. the temperature drop took out both of my wifes blood parrots but everything else made it.

It was a lot of work but almost a complete success. ( oh and pest snails stink when they cook I actually saved a lot of them but what I missed ewwwwww)

Good Luck

When I swapped tanks a couple years ago I bought six 27 gallon tubs along with sponge filters and ran them for a week. I also bought those little pre set heaters. I didn't feed. No losses

 

[jonny5]

ah well good to hear, i wont have to worry too much about heat here and i think my heaters wont have too much of a strain if i cover the tanks at night. Never rains in summer here so i can just get an extension cord from the garage and work it. eeew i never thought about the rotting smell of pest snails, my tanks are full of MTS.

 

[Binge]

Oh nono not just the smell of rot, the smell of boiled steamed ramshorn snails that were cooked for 24 hrs.... took about a week before the smell was gone. Only thing I left in the tanks was substrate and what snails I missed.

With them tenting the house you may actually want to tear down the tanks fully and remove them from the home Insecticides and poisons settle and may cling to your internal glass and any substrate left in the tanks. Insecticides would wipe out your fish even at lower levels from residue.