Lost half my fish!

[Brian Murphy]

So I was changing my Co2 bottle on xmas eve and also had a blocked sewer out the back of the house which the landlord was fixing at the time. Between changing the O-ring in the regulator and setting it back down and going out to see the landlord, the flow adjustor knob must got turned up. Anyway I left it ready to come on at 3pm and I went off to cover a shift at my mother-in-laws chippy til around 8pm. I got a phonecall around 9pm from my gf to get home quick as most of my fish where dead!!
I told her to raise the spray bars above the waters surface and make sure the Co2 was off. I rushed home to a very sad sight. My 4 bala/silver sharks that I had from my first tank this year and had grown to some size where lying dead at the bottom of the tank, near every other fish where either on their side gasping or dead
I took out around 25% of the water and and added a few buckets of fresh water so as to add as much oxygen to the water as I could. I lost my 4 balas, 9 harlequin rasboras, 2 kribs, 5 rummynose tetras, 2 black mollys, 2 swordtails, approx 10 ember tetras. I left anything that was gasping in the tank and hoped for the best ..... there was loads of oxygen in the tank by now and some fish where showing good signs. By the morning everyone had come back to life apart from a swordtail.
Not a nice thing to witness but really shows how careful you have to be when using Co2!

 

[samboco]

Nightmare!!

 

[Ady34]

I feel for you murf, same thing happened to me in my first set up and it's devastating. i mark my needle valve position now and run a bubble counter to give me an idea of where the settings are so I can check things arnt wildly different after maintenance.
No consolation now I know, but you did the right things re spraybar and water changes and seem to have saved some fish with your intervention.
Cheerio
ady

 

[LondonDragon]

Always a pain when I have to change the CO2 bottle in case this happens to me too (it has happened to me in the past also) and now buy 5kg bottles so I only have to change it once every 10-11 months! Now I always change it on a weekend to ensure I am at home the next day to monitor it.

 

[Matt Warner]

sorry to hear about your fish losses. It's easy done though so don't be too hard on yourself.

 

[SmallestFrog]

Same sort of thing happened to me, woke up on Xmas Eve, almost all fish gone

 

[Rob watkins]

Same happened with me last year, but overnight. put me back to not using co2 for ages until I read a few books last week and then found this site last night. it happens, but please don't let it stop you as it did me. learn from it instead. better set up and some safety guards are my take home messages.

 

[ghostsword]

sorry to hear about your fish losses. It's easy done though so don't be too hard on yourself.

I feel sorry for you mate.. It happens often, so don't be too hard on yourself..

Once I killed all my fish in one go, did not allowed for the end of the cyllinder, and more co2 than normal got pumped in..

 

[Brian Murphy]

Thanks for your sympathy. I left it a day or so but have the co2 going back in again but started it down low with only a few bubbles per second and today have moved it up to 4 or 5 bubbles a second. The drop checker was still showing blue so needed to turn it up a little. Hopefully things will be ok now.

 

[Antipofish]

Big shame, but do you use a bubble counter ? A simple check with this could have avoided all that loss Its a mistake thats been made before and will happen again. Nearly happened to me. Shame there is not an alarm system for this. Makes me wonder if pH controllers could have some use after all.

 

[Brian Murphy]

I do use a bubble counter but the Co2 hadn't come on before I left the house and wasn't aware that the needle valve had moved by that stage

 

[Antipofish]

I do use a bubble counter but the Co2 hadn't come on before I left the house and wasn't aware that the needle valve had moved by that stage

Ahh, always best to test. A tough lesson to learn but you wont do it again.