I remodeled my aquarium and bad bad things happened. What can I do to fix it?

So this weekend I decided I was going to remodel. So I went to my local lake (address of it). and I kayaked and got some driftwood that I thought was perfect. So yesterday I soaked all the pieces in hot water outside. I emptied the tank best I could while still keeping the filter moist. Then I added black sand to my 20 g. tall. I just covered my existing gravel with a light layer of the black sand. You could still see the blue pieces of gravel. I added the desired pieces of driftwood to my tank. I couldn't find my seachem prime, so I panicked and instead added "D-Klor" from . The "D-Klor" had vitamin c in it and I knew that if I added too much that it would be fine(I read that off their site) After about 10 minutes of panic, I finally found my Seachem prime. I added my SeaChem prime. I woke up today to find every single young fish dead. The adult neon tetras and guppies still alive. But all the young(not babies) died. Will the adults die too. My water parameters are fine, I use API freshwater kit ($27). So I boiled the pieces to the best of my ability and added the driftwood back. I thought that not boiling them might have caused my fish to die. I added them back in 1 hour ago. Will my adult fish be ok? I really want them to be alive in the morning. I will add photos to show you what the 20 gallon tall looks like now.

Aquarium:
20 Gallon tall
10 neon tetras
1 BN pleco
6 M/F guppies

 

Can you give specific water parameters? Which young fish died?

 

I am curious about this as well... I've read that you shouldn't take things from the beach and put them in your tank, but what if the difference if you buy it in the store? It's still natural.

Did your fish live? Did you do a major water change?

I'm guessing that the wood should be boiled prior to putting it in the tank... Hope it works out. The wood is beautiful!

 

did you re acclimate the fish to your tank its either that or I would be concerned that you added parasites to your tank.

 

I will be watching this thread. The only thing I will say is that when you get driftwood from a lake it could have all kinds of parasites, tannic, etc.

 

Only young guppies died. Yes a major water change. Yes I boiled them.

 

The safest way to get driftwood is getting it at a pet store

 

Yes but for a 1 foot piece it cost like $26 bucks when I got a 5ft piece for $3

 

Where do you get 5ft driftwood for 3 dollars? Oh you mean the lake cost money???! And yes it is more expensive, but I would rather be safe than sorry.

 

It's three dollars to get in to it because it a national lake. Would the boiling of the wood have killed parasites.

 

Ehhhhh.

 

It should have most of them, if not all. Most parasites can be killed with heat.

Can you not list specific parameters?

 

I will later. I just got to work

 

Also how long did you boil it for? I know for drinking water they recommend 20 minutes of boiling. And that's just for water. I would imagine a piece of driftwood would take a while for the inside to get to boiling temperature and then would need to stay at that for a while to kill any parasites or pathogens that could be hiding inside it.

 

Another thing that would be good to see is if you have water parameters before and after adding the driftwood. Perhaps something like pH fluctuated too quickly for the young fish to handle?

 

6 hours

All adult fish are living currently

 

Could it have been a case of old tank syndrome since you did a large water change all at once?

 

What is old tank syndrome? It has been a while since I have heard about it

 

It's where you have high nitrates and low KH and GH from not doing water changes for a while. The new water can be very different and shock them.

 

That's what happened.