Author Topic: Cloudy smelly tank. (Read 11947 times) 36 replies

Sue · « **Reply #20 on:** September 25, 2014, 12:07:24 PM »

Did you know that hydrogen sulphide is actually more toxic than hydrogen cyanide? But it is so smelly that a tiny bit smells like a huge amount so you can never get a lethal dose as you couldn't stand the smell long enough. (OK, some people would

) I used H₂S gas straight from a cylinder many many years ago as a chemistry research student and believe me, a tiny whiff stinks out the whole room.

A lot of people reckon the danger from hydrogen sulphide in an aquarium is over rated as very little dissolves in the water from the surface of the bubble in the same way that very little oxygen dissolves from the bubbles from an air stone. But continual seepage of the gas from the substrate would dissolve more. And it would just take one fish to be overcome then that one decomposing could do the rest of the damage.

I'm not trying to scare everyone. If this was a common occurrence, no-one would use sand. If you can tolerate them, MTS do a very good job of aerating sand and are also useful as an early warning system - if they ever crawl up the glass during the daytime, something is very wrong with the tank. Stirring the sand gently at every water change also stops gases building up.

dbaggie · « **Reply #21 on:** September 25, 2014, 12:49:27 PM »

Quote from: Rich_D on September 24, 2014, 11:28:23 PM

On a side note I've found an online place to get some mor plants and for the amount its very cheap! 200 plants for just under £29 which is an awful lot cheaper than it was for me to buy them in shops. Anyone had any experience buying plants online???

Since discovering how cheap you can get stem plants of eBay I've never bought a plant from a shop again!

Sue · « **Reply #22 on:** September 25, 2014, 12:59:58 PM »

Some people selling plants, be it on Ebay, an on-line shop or a real shop, sell non-aquatic plants for aquariums. Check what the plants are before using them. Favourites are dracenas and spider plants.

jesnon · « **Reply #23 on:** September 25, 2014, 01:36:14 PM »

Really sorry to read this.. hope you get things back to normal soon

ColinB · « **Reply #24 on:** September 25, 2014, 02:00:49 PM »

Quote from: Sue on September 25, 2014, 12:07:24 PM

Did you know that hydrogen sulphide is actually more toxic than hydrogen cyanide? But it is so smelly that a tiny bit smells like a huge amount so you can never get a lethal dose as you couldn't stand the smell long enough. (OK, some people would ) I used H₂S gas straight from a cylinder many many years ago as a chemistry research student and believe me, a tiny whiff stinks out the whole room.

It's when you stop smelling it that's you know it's reaching dangerous levels. One sniff and you're dead before you hit the ground. I used to work on the rigs in the North Sea, and one of my jobs was to don a gas mask and go and stand by the drill cuttings return with H₂S sniffer in hand.

One of the safety lectures we had told of an H₂S leak in a work pit below ground level. (H₂S is denser than air.) There was someone lying at the bottom of the pit - so they sent someone in to find out what was wrong. He collapsed..... so they sent someone else in.... When the fourth person had collapsed they twigged that something was seriously wrong - and they had 4 dead workers!

Sue · « **Reply #25 on:** September 25, 2014, 03:13:48 PM »

Should have mentioned that. The first symptom of H₂S poisoning is that it numbs the nerves so you can't smell anything.

Shadow Bass · « **Reply #26 on:** September 25, 2014, 03:56:01 PM »

Test your source water, out of your tap.

Shadow Bass · « **Reply #27 on:** September 25, 2014, 05:06:59 PM »

Sorry, but i didnt see where you had tested your source water (tap) ??

Puffin · « **Reply #28 on:** September 25, 2014, 05:51:24 PM »

Ok, my MTS are regularly climbing the walls.
Do you mean en masse Sue, or five or six? Cos I have a lot of MTS and at any one time several are climbing.

Shadow Bass... What test are you suggesting to do on the tap water?

Sue · « **Reply #29 on:** September 25, 2014, 06:42:11 PM »

He might mean that the water company did something just in time for a water change just before Rich went away. I was once told by a local fish shop that people who did water changes at a weekend often found they lost fish shortly afterwards. Someone had the idea of phoning the water company and was told they flushed the pipes out on a weekend. Something about being something to remove limescale deposits or to stop them occurring. After going through several people, the contents of the phone call got a bit garbled.

So the next question for Rich is - when was the last time you did a water change before going away?

Sue · « **Reply #30 on:** September 25, 2014, 07:41:02 PM »

Quote from: Puffin on September 25, 2014, 05:51:24 PM

Ok, my MTS are regularly climbing the walls.
Do you mean en masse Sue, or five or six? Cos I have a lot of MTS and at any one time several are climbing.

En masse. A few at any one time is nothing to worry about. It's when they all try to exit the water at the same time that alarm bells should ring.

Rich_D · « **Reply #31 on:** September 26, 2014, 12:20:42 AM »

Thanks for the sympathy guys, pretty much everything cleaned I decided to bleach clean then wipe back over with clean water just for my own state of mind and leave it to dry for the next few days only my filter pipes left to clean tomorrow.

The plants - I found a website that will send them and does packages of mixed foreground, background and midground plants and colour. Costs £29 for 200+ plants which I had to laugh as I reckon I've spent triple that easily on plants from shops as I'd never considered buying online, which I will be doing from now on.

Regarding the tap water, I have tested it and I do my water changes on a weekend anyway and have never lost fish from that? When I tested my tap water to see what the readings were originally to see what they were it was on a weekend and they matched my tank which was good. I'm starting to lean towards steves theory as I know in my tank the sand was deep in areas and my plec and corys could have disturbed it as I had lots of plants I didn't want to start stirring the subtrate and pulling roots up. Anyway because I only used toys are us sand I've thrown everything away and only kept the rocks and equipment and been out and bought some sand today but only 30kg which before I used around 45/50kg of sand. So hopefully this will be better. I'm also looking at other ways of keeping the sand disturbed as the other half hates snails, I was thinking khuli loaches would work well as they bury and keep the circulation in the sand or would I be better of with a stick and doing it myself?

dbaggie · « **Reply #32 on:** September 26, 2014, 07:45:05 AM »

Probably a bit of a long shot but thought I'd throw it in; some type of cichlid will pick sand up in their mouth and quite often move it about. I've no experience with cichlids though so don't know whether this would be sufficient disturbance of the substrate. Even if it was there's obviously the important aspect of whether you would want cichlids and they often aren't ideal tank mates for plants.

Even with fish that would disturb the substrate, I would still routinely do it. I'd see it as a similar principle to algae eaters - yes they help but don't rely on them to do it all.

Shadow Bass · « **Reply #33 on:** September 26, 2014, 12:47:39 PM »

Quote from: Sue on September 25, 2014, 06:42:11 PM

He might mean that the water company did something just in time for a water change just before Rich went away. I was once told by a local fish shop that people who did water changes at a weekend often found they lost fish shortly afterwards. Someone had the idea of phoning the water company and was told they flushed the pipes out on a weekend. Something about being something to remove limescale deposits or to stop them occurring. After going through several people, the contents of the phone call got a bit garbled.

So the next question for Rich is - when was the last time you did a water change before going away?

Please read This Article: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/rhf/feature/

Sue · « **Reply #34 on:** September 26, 2014, 04:28:03 PM »

I think Rich is well aware of using a dechlorinator to remove chlorine. The chances are that he does have chlorine rather than chloramine, although there are some water companies in the UK switching to chloramine. Though there is always the possibility he forgot to use it on one occasion. Being a new tank, the bacteria would not have fully bedded in and could have been affected by any oversight of this nature. With a mature tank, forgetting the dechlorinator once wouldn't do much harm - some fishkeepers with very mature tanks do not use a dechlorinator at all for small water changes.

I am also aware that in the USA it is common for water companies to add extra chloramine if there has been a lot of rainfall in the area, meaning that the fish keeper has to use extra dechlorinator when this happens. I do not know if this is a common practice in the UK.
In the UK, water companies have been known to pump a pulse of higher pressure though the pipes to dislodge any sediment, and I think this is what the shop was referring to when they said the water company 'did something for limescale'.

Shadow Bass · « **Reply #35 on:** September 26, 2014, 08:55:32 PM »

Chloramine poses two significant headaches for aquarists. First, chlorine-neutralizing chemicals such as sodium thiosulfate only neutralize the chlorine portion of chloramine, neglecting an even bigger problem: deadly ammonia. The consequences can be devastating to fish. Although a tank's biological filter will (eventually) convert the ammonia to nitrate, the time it takes to do so may be longer than what your fish can tolerate.

Only an offer at a helpful diagnosis, im sure Sue will have a rebuttal for this as well.

No Matter. Im gone.

Rich_D · « **Reply #36 on:** September 27, 2014, 12:43:28 AM »

I'm very lucky in that my tap water is very good and low for all the things it is monitored on and they are all well below the levels It has to be under.

The more I consider steves suggestion the more I feel it was that and something I engineered in using too much subtrate and not stirring up the subtrate. so have bought about half the subtrate I used before after finding a formula to use to tell me the depth and amount i needed. So should stop this happening again.

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Cloudy Smelly Tank.

Cloudy Smelly Tank.

Author Topic: Cloudy smelly tank. (Read 11947 times) 36 replies

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