how to remove nail polish remover?

[ReeferKimberly]

ok so, i guess this happens to everybody once. i did a stupid thing and while i was scraping algae off an old dry tank, i though, hey maybe so nail polish remover would help. well, it sure helped getting the algae to come off but.....

after i'm done i decide to soak the tank for a while, dump it, and soak it again. i only used about 3 teaspoons of nail polish remover and i thought by this time it would be gone....WRONG.

this was last night. well i then took the tank, set it up with a seeded filter, got the temp right, and added 18 4 week old babies i got from work (and some worms). about an hour later the worms were dead and the babies were spinning and dying. i moved the remaining babies (12) to another i had waiting for cary's fish to arrive this morning. i cleaned and scrubed the tank and re-filled it with water. i wanted the other tank to be free for cary's fish so i added the rest of the babies and took a chance.

it's the next day and im down to 4 and they are in with cary's right now. i wanna know when the other tank will be ready, how do i get all the stuff out, and when will i know it is safe???

well i learned my lesson, i can't beat the rules :( :( :( :(
kimberly

[ReeferKimberly]

oh yeah, the ingredients are :

Acetone , Water , Propylene Carbonate , Dimethyl Glutarate , Dimethyl Succinate , Dimethyl Adipate , Glycerin , Gelatin , Fragrance , Denatonium Benzoate , Yellow 11

[M0oN]

Ouch, that's really too bad.

You could try bleach at a 1 part to 3 parts solution, soak it for 24 hours then soak it in water for another 3 days, change the water out every 24 hours...

[slicksta]

from what I know....it is basicly accetone which should evaporate.....not sure why you are having a problem....maybe other chems mixed in withh nail polish remover....
I would rinse the tank several times and let it dry over night
next time use bleach....I found it the best for cleaning a tank...

[Ryan]

Well, I think the biggest mistake is mixing the two groups of fish together. You don't want to risk Cary's fish getting sick from something that your other discus were carrying. So you've basically skipped your quarantine procedure.

Second, are you sure that the first batch of discus really died from the nail polish remover? It's a possibility I suppose, but how do you know for sure? Maybe it was stress from being moved or something about their water quality?

Does your tank still smell like nail polish remover? If not, chances are that it's gone. Next time to be safe, just use bleach because you can rinse that out and use a dechlor product to be sure it's gone completely.

Ryan

[ReeferKimberly]

thanks guys, i think i will do a few more water changes and wait another 24 hours. then i'm gonna test is with some worms. it seems that when the worms start to go i got about a half hour before the babies start dying. if the worms stay alive, i will do one more full water change and try a fish, if it dies or looks sick, i will try that bleach solution and see if that works. i learned the meaning of "porus" (sp?) glass. is that what tanks are made out of?
my mom told me that if the tank is porus then it may have absorbed the nail polish remover before i rinsed and soaked the tank and that maybe why it's sticking around...? thanks guys for your help!
kimberly :-*

[Carol_Roberts]

People mix some meds with acetone to disolve and add to fish tank . . . .

[ReeferKimberly]

I know the babies were healthy. i got them from my store where i see all the discus, and their parents every day. i have done a "fish run" every day on them since the day they were born and only lost 3 out of the whole spawn. my store is impeccibly clean and we take discus from no outside sources, they are clompletely born and raised in seclusion from other fish. i would expect to lose at least a few of them due to the stress of moving at this young age, but i not 14 out of 18. i know, i hate them being with cary's fish but i really have nowhere else to put them at this very moment. one of my tanks is at my boyfriends and 2 others are reef tanks right now. i'm really between a rock and a hard place right now :( :( :(

[Ryan]

You also mentioned that the fish didn't start dying until an hour after you put them into the tank. Did they act strangely at the time? One would think that if it were the nail polish remover that were the culprit, it would have started to have an effect on them almost immediately. Were they darting around or spiralling after you introduced them to the tank?

Sorry for all the questions, but I've never dealt with nail polish remover in an aquarium and so I don't know how discus react to it. After all those rinsings and water changes, you'd think it'd be gone by now.

Ryan

[ReeferKimberly]

nope, the tank doesn't smell like it anymore but i used so little that after the first soak it didn't smell like it. the reason i know it is the polish remover is b/c first the babies were dying, so i moved the living ones. then, i cleaned the tank and put them back in. after the living ones got back their strength and were swimming and eating, i put them back in the other tank. within an hour they had don't a complete 180 and most of them died. i have pretty much ruled out that it could be a disease due to the extreme nature in which they died when moved back to the other tank in such a short time.

[ReeferKimberly]

yep before i even saw your post ryan i posted about how they died so immediately

[ReeferKimberly]

good point carol, i wonder what else it could be.. maybe the combination of the chemical together?

also, the last four are doing well right now in the big tank. they are eating and swimming with fins erect, no clamping.
you know how people say every tank has to have it's runt right? well i was thinking to maybe just leave these four in with the larger 8 and let them be the runts. the "bad" tank is way too big to dedicate to only 4, 18 was a much better number. once i am sure the tank is free of all toxins i will set it up again and get a larger number of fish.

counting on them being disease free, will there be any downsides of having the babies in with the bigger ones just to act as runts?
thanks guys for all your help,
kimberly :-*

[Ryan]

Are you sure all your water parameters (pH, temp, et.) were the same in each tank? The fish are young, and sometimes dramatic changes like that can prove fatal. I'm not saying that stress killed your fish, but it's just another possibility that I'd like to throw out there.

I've had young angelfish die before because I did huge water changes on them or moved them from tank to tank at a young age, and the water didn't match. Sometimes pH and temperature swings can be difficult for little ones to deal with. My angel babies were about 10 weeks old and eating well, and after the water change I lost over half of them. It happens sometimes.

Ryan

[ReeferKimberly]

well the temp was the same, and it was new water for both tanks. the only thing i could think of, and maybe i will do an experiment to test this, is maybe the remover caused a big ph swing that was very stressful or evn fatal to them...?

b/c both of these tanks were changed with almost 100% new water i believe the parameters must have been the same. i was in a panic to save my babies so i did not take the time to check.

[ReeferKimberly]

it could have very well been the stress, but that doesn't explain the complete death of the worms. just about 45 min after i put them in there they were all dead, almost white in color, and deteriorating at the botton of the tank in one big heap.

[RandalB]

Kim,
Rinse the tank out well. Use a bleach flush (1 Gallon of bleach in full tank of water, let sit for 8 hours, rinse). Rinse again. Run activated Carbon in the tank for a couple of days. Try a cull or cheap fish and see what happens.

Or, Toss the tank and get a new one.. (What I'd do..) If the silicone absorbed those nasty di-methyls it may never be safe.

For future reference, Soaking the algea with Vinegar works fine.

HTH,
RandalB

[ReeferKimberly]

thanks randal i was leaning towards the bleach thing. i was planning to use one or 2 of my 5 gajillion convict babies i have no use for lol.

i thought about the vinegar thing but for some reason i had in my mind that it would only work for calcium deposits and the like on the outside...hmm don't know why i thought that.
if this was a small tank i would toss it but it's a nice tank and i wanna do everything i can to save it...b/c....i'm poor lol

[Divantie]

You can neutralize acetone with sodium bicarbonate, that what we do before we dump it down the drain.

[April]

high heat will kill blackworms..or..they overate the worms..and i would say what killed them is that the worms turned white which is pure ammonium..and they ate some. and dead. happens that fast.
acetone is also acid..so it possibly couldve crashed your ph which wouldve killed the worms and the fish. maybe a bit of both...ph crashes are very deadly to fish . and ammonium from dead worms is also deadly
a girl here had bigger fish than you..and she fed them..the worms turned white and within an hour or less all dead and dead worms . white.