Tropical Fish Forums

[tetrabarb]

Me and my mom had to paint my room and in order to paint one of the walls my 20G aquarium had to move. It was on a long table so my mom was justt going to try and scoot it a little away from the wall. The table decided it would literally break a leg. So one of the legs fell off on the side that was supporting the fully stocked 20G! I was about to die! we had to prop the leg back under the table and then decide what to do.

I knew it had to come off that table which would require carrying it onto something else. My parents insisted that they could carry it full of water and gravel and I said NO WAY! It weighs way more than than they thought it would. I figured the only thing to do was to take out as much water as possible and then let them lift it. So I got out my gravel vac and emptied probably 70% of the water out of the tank. Now I allowed them to move it. It was hard for them, so imagine if I didn't empty it!

The tank was hardly filled with water with the fish in it still. [the fish included: 1 zebra danio, 5 corys, 6 neons, 2 platys, 3 ottos, and a male betta]
Once the room was painted we decided to buy a stand for the 20G. We were able to move it onto the new stand and I then filled it with water.

The fish seemed fine for a couple days then I came home to find them all laying on the bottom gasping for air with some white flaky looking stuff coming off them [it looked kinda like if they had white skin and it was peeling off] within a couple hours they had died and I was devastated and confused. I tryed to find out what must have happened to them and what kind of disease they had but found absolutely nothing! The most confusing part is that the betta fish was perfectly fine! He is still alive today.

This is a severe case of MFD! If you have any idea what killed them please tell me! I know the major water change must have killed them but why did they lie on the bottom gasping for breath with stuff on them?

Just recently I came up with the idea that maybe there wasnt enough oxygen in the water. That would explain why they were gasping and why only the betta survived. What do you think?!?
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[richiestang_78]

Well I'm sure that the lack of oxygen caused there death but still not sure what the flaky white stuff was. You could have gotten away with taken only have the water out since that would have lowered the weight to about 80lbs which would have been plenty easy to move with two people. Also when you emptied the water, did you place the filter media in some water to keep the bacteria from dying? Please test the water and post the results on here for better help.

In the future when trying to figure out how much your tank weighs and how much water you need to take out remember, 1 gallon of water weighs 8.33 pounds.

[tetrabarb]

well...this happened a couple months ago.

the part I forgot to mention is that we decided to completely tear the tank down, clean everything in a bleach solution, and I remodled it to look much better.

I just wish my LFS sold better live plants...
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[Shai]

[fishy me]

I am not a pro with diseases but I'm thinking they had ich/white spot. I have a book, heres what it says: "White spots like sugar grains on the skin and gills are signs of a parasite infection called white spot, one of the most commonly seen problems among aquarium fish. Treatments target the free-swimming stages of the parasite's lifecycle and to be effective must be carried out over a period of a few days. left untreated, white spot will quickly spread to all fish in the aqaurium." Pretty much one fish has the spots, some pop off and swim around to find another fish and then contaminate that one. Its like a chain reaction unti lall fish are contaminated.

[Flame Angel]

[fishy me]

Sorry, I said I wasn't a pro...

[tetrabarb]