Fake Decor - bad smell

[Bradders]

Hi All,

As some of you know, I had that Police Box in my aquarium. I have done some moving around today, took it out and left it in the sink. After a while it really, really started to smell. It let off a sea-weedy like smell and was really unpleasant.

I immediately feared the worst and did an ammonia, nitrite and nitrate test. (0, 0, 5 respectively) and then did some deep substrate tests to see if something was going on down there. (Substrate deep tests by sniffing showed no foul smells). Fish are all healthy, and that thing is NOT going back in!

Does anyone have any experience with fake decor and not-so-nice smells?!

Brad

 

[MichaelJ]

Does anyone have any experience with fake decor and not-so-nice smells?!

Well, decor that I've removed in the past such as roots and rocks would have a fetid swampy odor - thats quite common. With rocks you can just scrub them, but it's not that easy with wood. I assume the ornament (Police Box) is made of plastic so it should be easy to clean up the biofilm and gunk that probably caused the odor. Plastic by itself decompose extremely slowly in water (a great deal of methane and ethylene) so I doubt anything leached into the water column.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Bradders]

Well, decor that I've removed in the past such as roots and rocks would be have a fetid swampy odor - thats quite common. With rocks you can just scrub them, but it's not that easy with wood. I assume the ornament (Police Box) is made of plastic so it should be easy to clean up the biofilm and gunk that probably caused the odor. Plastic by itself decompose extremely slowly in water (a great deal of methane and ethylene) so I doubt anything leached into the water column.

Yes, this was a plastic piece of decor and it smelt really bad after being left exposed to the air sitting in my sink. I really was not expecting that at al.