NH3 Burn?!

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sellwoc

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 15, 2007
17
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scotland
Left the tank in the capable hands of my mother whilst me and the wife were out of town over the weekend and have arrived home to chaos! The external filter broke down and the internal filter's pumps discharge pipework came loose and essentially was just recycling the filter. So far i have lost 3 pictus cats, the aro appears to have Nh3 burns to the head and is off his food and several others seem under the weather ( no wonder!!). To remedy the problem i have reattached the internals pipework and bought a bigger eheim external and then treated the tank with melafix. 2 questions i would like answered are

1. will the tank cycle again? although the internal filter was still working it was only recycling the water already inside in it.
2. is melafix the best treatment for this problem and is there anything else i can do except water changes, which i am already doing frequently?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

chris
 
wow dude i'm sorry do daily water chnages! also buy bio srprill best chance of saving you tank :) use menfilx would heal any injures but nothing eles really at least i think. sorry for you losses :( hope for the best!
 
If I were you Id go with brianjh's advice, plus go to a LFS and buy some pre-cycled filter media. Your filters are basically worthless until they cycle, and your fish probably wont survive waiting for the cycle. And if you keep up the water changes, it will take forever to cycle. Id definetly try to buy some preestablished media, and then go with brianjh's advice with the salt, temp, and water changes. Good luck
 
Thanks for the advice. Will add the salt today and continue with the water changes and cross my fingers that the rest of the fish don't die. Hope the internal's bacteria population didn't all die. I have been adding cycle (think the bottle is called stress zyme) so will keep that up aswell to try and populate the new external.
 
Changed more water today and burns on his head have cleared up. He still isn't eating the pellets but he is eating his lance fish! Things are looking up. Hope he continues to heal up and continues to grow.
 
good luck and great job keep it up :)
 
i have never ever added salt to my tank my fish are not brackish water

the way i always look at it is salt would hurt if you put it on a cut on your hand

melafix never had any problems with it
 
T1KARMANN;1619684; said:
i have never ever added salt to my tank my fish are not brackish water

the way i always look at it is salt would hurt if you put it on a cut on your hand

melafix never had any problems with it
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I have never had any issues with melafix either, i just try to avoid medication at all cost.
Very true, if you had a cut on your hand, and poured salt on it....it would hurt!! But the ratio of salt to water in a fresh water tank?
I dont use salt consistant with water changes, so if i use maybe 2 measured cups of salt per 50 gallons,for 2 weeks of water changes to help heal, the amount of salt in the actual tank is minimal... so you see, its kinda hard to compare to pouring salt on an open wound.
 
gonnelro;1614730; said:
If I were you Id go with brianjh's advice, plus go to a LFS and buy some pre-cycled filter media.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't risk taking a LFS's filter media, high risk of disease being introduced. Instead you can grab filter media from another one of your established tanks if you have one or get one from a buddy you trust. Otherwise, just keep up with the water changes and moniter your parameters carefully. Good Luck
 
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