Sterilizing lethal 30 Breeder tank

Last week I lost my West African Lungfish to what most likely seemed a nasty bacterial infection that led to lethal massive internal hemorrhage. The tank I refer to was his growing tank.

I lowered the tank's water volume as much as I could, remove and dismantled all accesories (HOB and Sponge filters) in order to clean them thoroughly. Today I removed as much substrate as I could.

Problem is there's still some water and substrate that is hard to collect. The tank still weights a bit too much for me to handle (I'm not particularly strong, in honesty I would say I'm under average for an adult male).

I am running out of ideas.

I tough about leaving it alone until the water evaporates. That may take a week or so though.

The water stinks by the way. Keep in mind I had a 5" depth substrate so it had its share of anaerobic pockets. It went without plants for a whole week.

I intend to use a strong chlorine solution (10 parts of tap water : 1 part of unscented Clorox or Ajax) to clean the interior walls of the tank as well as the plastic rI'm on top.

I had some nice stones in that tank that I would like to keep.

What should be a safe yet least-damaging-to-the-rocks'-surface method for no-doubt sterilization?

Pepetj
Santo Domingo

 

Personally, I'd add a couple of inches of water, dose the water with bleach, stir the gravel up to get the bleach down into everything, then drain the excess, refill a few inches, dose with dechlor, drain, fill all the way, drain, rinse, and drain.

 

I would either bleach everything, rinse well and add extra dechlorinator or

dose pure ammonia up to 5ppm and keep it that way for a week, nothing will survive toxic levels of ammonia, the best thing about doing this it will not kill your cycle!

Anna

 

Thanks Anna, in other scenario I like your idea (even up to 6 ppm) but I do need to kill everything. I won't take chances after what happened.

Last Sunday I tossed some water and substrate from this tank into a bucket with healthy tilapia feeder fish (raised by myself) for my predator fish. All died within 24 hours with the same symptom the West African Lungfish had.

I need to kill this tank and start over from zero.

I took a 4gal bucket and placed it next to the tank; carefully tilted the tank as to pour its content in it. It left some substrate but it's drying now. I will get it sterilized tomorrow.

I put the substrate in plastic bags and dumped it in the garbage can.

I placed the stones in a somewhat heavy chlorine solution; as well as the sponge filter and the HOB intake tubes. I'll let them there overnight.

Thanks for your ideas

Pepetj
Santo Domingo

 

Sorry about your lungfish!! I think I remember reading somewhere that he was an early gift from your wife? Please correct me if I am wrong. I know you were so excited about him!! Sorry again for your loss!!

I too would go the bleach, rinse route and then rinse again with a declor. What size tank are we talking about? Is it the 30 gallon?

 

Awww jeez man I'm sorry to hear you lost your lung fish. I have always used table salt to clean and sanatize my tanks. It in my opinion is just as good as bleach and has iodine in it. It requires less rinsing and less dechlorinator than standard household bleach. I usually. Use the salt as a scouting media then just add more and leave the tank sit for 24 hrs full of very salty water before rinsing. I have never had a problem doing this. Rember salt NaCl sodium chloride the chloride part being chlorine plus iodine.