complete clean out of fish tank

jrochie

hi guys,

first time posting in this forum. I've had a fish tank with nearly 2 years, absolutely delighted with it. Did take a while to get it sorted properly and lost a few fish along the way but up until recently things have been great. Unfortunately I've been away from home the last few weeks and its not received the proper care its needed, including my filter getting blocked up and not being properly freed for a few days, and a bit of over feeding of the fish. The fish themselves seem ok except for one, but there is a lot of residue on the bottom of the tank, and the place has become a bit of a mess.

I've gotten to the stage now where I'd like to completely empty it out and in a way start again. The whole look of the tank isn't very appealing at the moment, I've pretty much knocked everything around the place trying to clear out some of the rubbish at the bottom. I know its not as simple as just emptying it all out and starting again so whats the best way to go about it?

I've 8 fish in total so what would I do with them while I changed it over? If I was to take them out, empty the water and clean the tank and then refill, how long would I have to wait for the fresh water to become livable for the fish? I've currently got 2 angel fish, 1 tiger barb, 1 red fin shark, 2 catfish, a swordtail and another guy i cant remember its name!

I'd appreciate any advice you guys might have!

Cookie_Monster

I wouldn't do that tbh. you should never change all the water really due to the bacteria etc living in it and the filter pads. Even if you left the pads in they would take a decent amount of time (days-weeks) to re-establish to a stage where they can cope with that number of fish

A few runs over it with a gravel hover, changing 20-50% water a day in the process for as many days as needed to get it clean should suffice IMO

jrochie

ok thanks Cookie_Monster. Another question, how would I go about changing the gravel? Or would I be better off just adding to it instead of completely removing it?

keithb93

The same thing happened to my tank the first week i went to college but the fish were fine.

Dont change the gravel just clean it with a gravel vacuum, do a water change as cookie_monster suggested and clean the filter in the emptied tank water.

You can take out the ornaments and rinse them in the emptied tank water while you clean the gravel.

The fish should never be moved from the tank unless your upgrading it.

vibe666

a gravel hoover/vacuum is your best bet, anywhere that sells aquatics stuff will have them, it's basically a gravity powered water pump (the same principle as syphoning petrol out of a fuel tank with a hose pipe ) with a large resovoir to agitate the gravel to loosen any fish gunk stuck to it which is then drawn up through the tube whilst the gravel falls back down due to its weight.

you'll want to gently remove any ornaments or plants etc. and clean them separately soas you have a clear run at all the gravel in the bottom of the tank with no obstructions. the fish will probably get a little spooked, but will move out of the way for the most part although be wary of anything that might have burrowed into the gravel to escape, such as kuhli loaches or similar.

all you do is get the pump going by making sure the pipe end is lower than the bottom of the tank (in a bucket or something or it'll get messy very quickly!) fill the large end with water and then give it a bit of a repeated vertical shake and let gravity do the rest.

once the flow is started, just use the big end to push into and slightly agitate a section of gravel and watch all the crap disappear up into the pipe and the cleaned gravel sink down again and lather rince, repeat until the tank is cleaned.

depending on the flow of the pipe, the size of your tank and how quick you are, you could run out of water before you've got the job done, so don't hang around too much, but if it does start getting ahead of you, just lift out the hoover to stop the flow of water and give yourself a break. either way, i wouldn't change more than 75% of the water at an absolute maximum, maybe even just do 50% if you can and then do another change 50% in a weeks time as there will be a lot of friendly bacteria lost from the water if you remove too much at one time. you will want to get a proper water testing kit so you can check your water properly for ammonia, nitrate, nitrite & pH to make sure your levels are okay for your fish stock.

remember also, that fresh tap water isn't going to be very healty for your fish, so you'll want to get some water conditioner/stress coat for it to neutralise all the chlorine etc. first if you plan on just adding it to the tank.

**you might also want to consider waiting a while before you change the filter as there will still be a lot of the friendly bacteria still living inside the filter media itself and (i've been told) that changing a large portion of the water and cleaning out the filter at the same time will remove enough of the friendly bacteria to cause issues.

**i'm still very much a beginner myself in all of this and i am just repeated what i've been told, so i'm sure someone here with more experience will be able to confirm or deny what i've said, so take all this with a grain of salt until someone more knowledgable comes along.

Jackob

This is a previous post from me about 6-7 months ago, and Finn,(my fish) still going strong!!, Had his 27 birthday yesterday!!!

Hi, Ok here's my routine.

My goldfish is now 26 years old, his buddy that we got a year later lived until he was 18 years old. Both shared a tank all their lives. From day one I have cleaned out the tank every second monday! By cleaning I mean I take out the goldfish and put him in a bucket/basin. I then empty all the stones into a collander and give them a really hot wash then a cold one. I empty the tank completely and scrub the inside with a toothbrush. I then clean out the filter which is a stingray 10, nothing fancy but does the trick brillliantly. I then reload the tank with TAP water thats not too cold. Pop back in the stones and filter and finally add Finn back to the tank. I do not use any chemicals or fancy treats, plants, etc!! I feed him on normal aqua thingy flakes. Acquarium guys are amazed when I tell him that I take out all the water. I only started to do it becuse I couldnt bear looking at the greenish water after a couple of weeks. Once when one of their fins started to rot, I took him out of the tank and put him in a nice big bucket with some salt in the water and no food for a couple of days and he was fine afterwards and please god is still going strong!!! So something must be working!!! Hope this helps, sometimes we can do wrong for trying to do right!.
Last edited by Jackob; 11-02-2011 at 16:57. Reason: PS I feed him when he wants food. He will stick his head out the top of the tank looking for a bit of food.
I should add its a goldish that I have, you appear to have more tropical types so I dont know if its the same routine!

Sleepy

You neither treat the water to remove Chlorine nor have you ever let sufficient bacteria build up to handle the tank's biological load?! The poor fish!

Jackob

Sleepy, I presume you are talking to me, if so, my fish is now 27 years old and in fine form, nice round tum and still holds a lovely golden colour. If he was in any discomfort I would know, I spend a lot of time ensuring that he is happy and healthy. In fact any aquarium guys I have spoken to have told me to keep doing what I do because its obviously working.

Sleepy

What size is he Jackob? A goldfish of that age (assuming he's a common) should be 10 - 12 inches in length.

Jackob

Nah, he wouldnt be that big, maybe 8 - 9 inches, to be honest I have never measured him.