Tank crash?

[pops]

I always cleaned my filters in a five gallon bucket as the water was siphoning into it from the tank, there buy replacing the water as a cleaned the filters. always did nothing but 90% or fin level water changes. never ever an issue. Cleaning in my kitchen sink would scare me as I I know what kind of cleansers we use to clean it and be afraid some kind of chems may contaminate the water.

 

[Niki_up]

There's a chance that the new water wasn't thoroughly mixed the last time you did it. It would have been better to plug sink, add prime, and then fill it. But time for circulation is required to make sure that the chloramine from tap is removed.

Zero carb (I assume this is a mix of zeolite and carbon) doesn't go bad, it just becomes useless for what it is intended after 3-4 weeks. After that period of time, it's just surface area for bacteria growth.

You are correct about the zeolite and carbon mixture. I’m fine with leaving it in my filter as a surface for bb to grow on. I just wasn’t sure if the carbon would “leech” crap into my water after it was used up (which it is bc it’s old)

 

[Niki_up]

I think there's been some good replies to your issue but we're pretty much second guessing. I could be completely off the mark, in fact thinking about it the quarantine issue which duanes picked up on is a good call too.

Going back to the cleaning of mechanical filtration. I used to clean mine in tank water religiously but rinsing dirty sponges out in a bucket full of tank water gets you nowhere if you want your sponges cleaned properly. All you're doing is swishing them around in muddy water once you squeeze them and the crud starts coming free.

You can't beat a running tap of warm water to do the job right ime. But like RD. said earlier, each hobbyist has to know their systems intimately to know what they can successfully get away with. We can't take it for granted that what some hobbyist is doing down the road, with complete success, will work just as well for us. Too many variables.

I agree, I’m loving the replies. great information being put foI haven’t been able to read all of them yet. Working on it.

yea it’s hard to rinse the sponge in such a small amount of tank water bc it gets so “muddy” and gross...it’s always a dark dark brown.

I think the guppies may have also introduced something into the tank along with the crash/mini cycle.

The ram is now shedding slime coat, and has a white patch on his tail, and all his fins are clamped.

I dropped the temperature down to 78. Did another 30% water change today with a 25% gravel vac.

I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to save the remaining fish.

 

[Niki_up]

The non-quarantined part is the most suspect to me.
Not using a Q.T. tank is the biggest mistake most aquarists make.
It doesn't matter if your LFS is trusted or not, because they get fish from many sources.
And shipping to the LFS alone can be stressful enough to cause the beginnings of an epidemic in your tank.

Think about how fast the Corona virus is spreading worldwide in humans these days

Were they bought as feeder type guppies? (not for feeding, but one of "those" tanks), these are the most suspect.
That said..
If you do a water change, and get low ammonia reading, using Chloraminated tap water, this is a normal result, Chloramines are "created" by your water provider by combining 4 or 5 parts chlorine, with 1 part concentrated ammonia, NH2 Cl.

When I lived in the U.S. and my tap water contained Chloramine, i would do 30-40% water changes every other day, and added just enough de-chlor in the form of Sodium Thiosulfate to neutralize the Chlorine amount of make up water, but because the Sodium Thio only neutralized the chlorine part, I would always get a trace reading of ammonia (@ 0.02 - 0.20)).
But within a very short time (5 to 10 minutes), the bio-media would eliminate that trace.

And although I usually clean media in old tank water, there is a contingent of aquarist's that believe rinsing media in chloraminated tap water forces old weak biofilm off, but allows the more robust bacteria to live and repopulate the media.
When we did tests of the pipes in the distribution system in my locality, (I was the house microbiologist) we found ammonia consuming bacteria throughout the entire distribution system, unaffected by normal chloramine levels.

I’m def not voicing for the lfs (they are not trusted, just stated the fish looked good in their tank) I don’t even know what kind of systems they have, one large one or individual for each tank.

the ammonia wasn’t such a surprise as it was in the “normal” range for my area...being it wasn’t the harmful free ammonia.The surprise to me was the missing nitrates.

 

[Rocksor]

You are correct about the zeolite and carbon mixture. I’m fine with leaving it in my filter as a surface for bb to grow on. I just wasn’t sure if the carbon would “leech” crap into my water after it was used up (which it is bc it’s old)

The only thing carbon would leech out is phosphates, and the amount leeched out depends on the quality of carbon. The phosphates would have come from the new carbon. Everything that carbon removes is adsorb by it. The only way to remove the compounds adsorbed by carbon is through a very large PH swing or very high heat, both of which would kill your fish first.