lvd04

Yesterday while changing the water in our 50 gal. tank, I mistakenly left the water running and the tank overflowed and got really cold. By the time I discovered it, our bigger fish (parrot chiclid and angel) were laying on the bottom not moving, but the smaller fish were swimming around( tetras, barbs, silver dollar, hatchets). We immediately did what we could to bring the water temp up and after a few hours, the ciclid and angel started swimming around) Unfortunately, by dinner time, we had over a dozen dead little fish and they still continue to croke. I've tested the pH and it's fine (7), plus the temp has been a steady 75 for about 24 hours now. The fish that are left are clearly very stressed. A local fish store suggested I keep the tank light off which I have done. can anyone suggest anything else? I had nightmares over this last night.

CHoffman

That is so sad...Soo sorry..This happend to me too..we left for the day and night and somehow my heater was unplugged. Both my Angelfish were lying on the gravel not moving..They pulled through though.
How fast did you bring the temp back up...That could have something to do with the losses.

agabr123

i'm really sorry to hear that

other than raising the temperature back up to 78 as slowly as possible (generally that's about 1 degree per hour, but for you i'd go with one degree over a few hours), there isn't much that you can do at this point but keep a close eye on your fish

lvd04

Thanks to both of you for replying. I think we did raise the water temp. too fast, so that's a lesson learned. No more dead fish today so I think we're over the worst, but we lost over half the fish in the tank. I really feel stupid.

Lucy

That's really a hard lesson. I'm so sorry you lost your fish.

CHoffman

It happens. We all make mistakes. The sudden temp change was probably just to much for them. I'm glad some of them made it...You should watch for secondary infection now...Like ick. Just keep a close on on them and keep their water super clean and you should be able to make it through. So sorry for your losses. It can be very hard to watch and not be able to do anything.

namehater

i know what your going through, almost the exact same thing happened to me. we went out of town for a weekend, well, i had unplugged my heater because the weather had been nice and the heater had been a little unreliable, at one point it got my tank up to 87*F! when i came back into town my water was at about 64*F! ive been fighting fish disease ever since, cant figure out what it is tho.

hopefully you get luckier than myself and dont have any further problems!

Fishies-for-me

do you use a hose from an outside tap?? I use a python from the kitchen and I try to get the water as close as possible in temp before starting to add to the tank. hope the rest of your fish make it...good luck.

AlyeskaGirl

I am so sorry for your loss.