Tropical Fish Forums

[ah_hup]

is it normal when the prawn start to decompose... some sort of cotton layer will come out from the prawn... then the prawn meat looked as if it's cooked like that.. cause mine turned red...
and those cotton layer flowing around the water and sticking to some of my decor and driftwoods... will they be gotten rid of by bacteria???

pls enlighten me!! urgent! thanks

[Bob]

I would say it is perfectly normal, you have a dead thing in water, it is decomposing, being eaten by bacteria, fungus and generally rotting (That's why we normaly bury or burn dead things).

I would have put the prawns inside some mesh bag of some sort.

Don't worry about it.

Just clean the tank up when you do your after cycled water change.

Bob

[unissuh]

It's fine. Perfectly normal in my experience to have the prawn changing color and getting fungal growth.

The gunk will either break down totally by itself, or get caught in the filter where you can remove it. You can remove it manually if the cycle has completed but you still have rotting prawn in the tank.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[msta]

hey, quick question for you

does the prawn stink, and does the room the tank is in stink??

(want to put one in my cycling tank for a ammonia source while I'm on holiday for 10 days and can not add liquid stuff manually, but I don't want a stinking home either)

thanks
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15G: Community around a Bolivian Ram

[haname]

A cooked prawn will not cause an odor the way uncooked will. If you get a raw one, just boil it for a minute or two or microwave it until it turns pink and opaque before putting it in the tank.
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Happy fishkeeping!

~Haname

[ah_hup]

hmm I don't know why.. but I just checked my seachem ammonia alert and it says SAFE, before that it was TOXIC. I was quite surprised as I only cycle my tank for 6 days.. and the ammonia so fast got broken down?? so I did an ammonia test and true enough the reading is 0.25ppm.. at first it was 2.0 ppm.
I also did a test on nitrate and the reading was very high! 100mg/l
how do I lower it?
the pH also did not change from the start of cycle till now and still remain at 8

so should I removed those prawns now??

I was thinking maybe it's because I use the product Seachem STABILITY for a consecutive 3 days thats why nitrate came out so fast. anybody can enlighten me? I'm very mixed up on what to do next now.

[FiftyCalibre]

Lower nitrates with water changes

[ah_hup]

so is my tank considered cycled since nitrates starts appearing and ammonia level dropping??

[ah_hup]

any help?

[FiftyCalibre]

When nitrites and ammonia are both 0, then I consider the tank cycled