re-setting up a tank after illness.

[discusjoe27]

I'm down to two wild caught green tefe discus. I got a few angel fish from a friend and QT they looked good to go, so I put them with the discus. well a few days later one of the angelfish got fungus, then it became hole in the head.
well my angels died and some are alive with fin rot.

what do I do to my tank, to get the what ever could be in the tank and filter out. then how do I go about setting it back up for discus? just set it up like a normal tank?

[rickztahone]

you can clean the whole tank and filter with a bleach solution. of course you would have to cycle that tank again and seed the filter.

HTH

[discusjoe27]

seed? what do you mean by seed? I got new media. should I just completely start over?

[rickztahone]

seed? what do you mean by seed? I got new media. should I just completely start over?

seeding simply means for the bio to build back up. if you have new media you will have to start your nitrification cycle once again. do you know how to do this?

[discusjoe27]

it would be basicly just like setting up a new tank, or is there extra steps that I will need to do?

[rickztahone]

it would be basicly just like setting up a new tank, or is there extra steps that I will need to do?

how did you set up the tank last time? there are two known ways (at least that i know of, we have a member working on a third currently) to cycle a tank. 1: using pure ammonia at 5ppm and cycling for 6 weeks
2: using really hardy fish to start the cylce (can become a problem if the hardy fish were infected with something. choice one is more sterile.
3: there are kick starters like bio-spira and such but i'm not well versed on these products so i'd hate to steer you in the wrong direction

so i guess there were 3 ways in the end with the 4th pending. go figure...let us know what you decide

[discusjoe27]

I didn't cycle the tank. I had a 225 gallon tall, set the 135 up on the other wall by my bed room door, and siphoned the water from the 225 to the 135 and took the filter of the 225 and put it on the 135.

I'm more or likely going to start complete over and do a fish less cycle and ad some friz turbo start or some micro be life

[rickztahone]

I didn't cycle the tank. I had a 225 gallon tall, set the 135 up on the other wall by my bed room door, and siphoned the water from the 225 to the 135 and took the filter of the 225 and put it on the 135.

I'm more or likely going to start complete over and do a fish less cycle and ad some friz turbo start or some micro be life

just fyi dirty tank water does not carry the beneficial bacteria that you need to kick start a cycle. a better option would have been to take some of your bio media from the larger tank and then run that in the new setup one. this is also why many of us keep at least one sponge filter in our fully cycled tanks. if need be we can just pull one out and kick start the cycle in another tank instantly. dirty tank water is only that, dirty tank water. if you do decide to do the kick start chemical things please ask members here who know which are better. i know a lot of them are just snake oils and do not work at all. i heard bio spira did work though, someone correct me if i'm wrong here. a fish-less cycle is the most sterile way to start a tank however and you eliminate a lot of variables in the future if your fish happen to get sick

[Disgirl]

Check out my fishless cycling experiment thread in WaterWorks.
Barb