[ShaneSmith]

I w as dosing my tank with KNO3 and the whole bag fell in. It was wet and in a slurry but i didn;t think much got into the tank. The tank has since turned white... i do 90% W/C every two days but its still white. UV is on. I'm sure i will get through this but i have lost power at the house where the tank is and the surface is covered in scum and smells odd. Most of the fish have died (Not Surprisingly). Has anyone else ever done this?

Would it be best to just Resetup the tank. I have been thinking of replacing with Florabase a lot lately.

 

[Rex Grigg]

NEVER hold large amounts of anything but WATER over your tank. Let this be a lesson for other people. I bring the MEASURED dose to the tank. Never measure the dose OVER the tank. This is actually basic baking and cooking common sense.

Have you tested the nitrate levels? If they are within reason you are fine. Not sure why the tank is white. KNO3 dissolves into a colorless solution. You say you have the UV running but don't have any power, how can this be? I would guess that the problems in the tank are more related to the power loss than anything else. Can you give us a better time-line of events?

When did you drop the KNO3 into the tank?
When did you lose power?
How long were you without power?

Dead fish can and will cause a bacterial bloom in a tank with no water movement or filtration.

If the tank is pretty much a total loss you can just dump and restart. If you go with the Florabase let us know how you like it. The LFS was trying to sell it to me but I was not impressed with the color or how soft the material was. I could crush it between my fingers.

 

[HeyPK]

When I was 14 years old, I tried adding some lawn fertilizer (solid granules from a large bag) to my tank and the plants produced completely white new growth. It looked like extreme iron dificiency, but at that time there were no chelated iron fertilizers available.

Now you have access to chelated iron compounds. Try some and see if the plants green up again.

 

[gpodio]

Ouch! I never dropped KNO3 into the tank but I did drop a bottle of Flourish into the tank once, luckily for me it didn't do much harm. Just keep doing large water changes, as much as you can remove each time. I don't think you will need to redo the entire tank unless you decide it's a convenient time to do so for other reasons seeing you have no fish to worry about now. With enough water changes you will get things back to normal, definetly test the water to see what the levels are.

Sorry to hear about that, I guess as Rex said.... it's one of those lessons one often learns the hard way. I'm still waiting for the day that I learn not to do water tests on top of the tank's glass lids, one of these days....

Giancarlo

 

[ShaneSmith]

I use Florabase a lot in other tanks. I like it more than Flourite / Floramax. Eco complete looks good but i cannot get it at a discount... Florabase is half the cost for me.

Wednesday Is the accident. Thursday when i woke up white tank, so i did a 90% wc. Friday Left it alone. Saturday Hurricane no power. Sunday Hurricane no power. Monday No power. Tuesday no power. Fish kill throughout this time.

The most i cook is a can of tuna fish or some eggs . Good lesson to learn.

I have no Test kits that are not out dated. UV of course is off when power is out.


Plant are looking healthy from what i can see. Good coloration. If the power is out any longer i will have to restard anyway. My dad has lost $800 dollars worth of marine fish from the last hurricane.

 

[Bert H]

Sorry to hear about your accident, Shane. I can sympathize with you in regards to no power. We lost ours for 3 days with Frances and now with Jeanne for 2 days. In our case, no power also means no water, as we have well water. I didn't lose any fish, and the plants all look good so far. I was actually surprised to see growth occur during this near black out.

 

[aviel]

ShaneSmith,

Just hearing about what you are going through is too painfull. When you overcome this - just post a message to let us know.

I now learned my lesson - thanks god I didn't have to learn it from my own experience !!!

Aviel.