Tank restart/cleanse after disease

[robbym89]

A while ago I posted asking about what disease my fish had and no one seemed to have the answer. Lost a lot of fish except a rabbit fish and tessalata eel seemed to be immune to whatever it was and theyre still kickin. My question is now how to restart this tank, as I will be moving the survivors to a new tank to be on their own for a bit.

Its a 300 gallon and i do FOWLR. My thoughts were to just drain and clean. A LFS employee told me I could add bleach to the system once I removed the livestock and that would rid the tank of any disease but he didnt have a lot of detail on how to do that.

My question is, whats my best course of action to restart the tank?

 

[jcmjoe]

If you add bleach to the tank , you will have to restart the entire cycling process over again, and unless you pull all the live rock and sand out and thoroughly rinse it , any little critters or sponge that left in it is going to just decompose and fuel a horrible ugly stage that would probably take months to clear up. It sucks but you could leave the tank fallow for a couple months and keep your salinity at like 1.019 and the parasite would die off since it has no host. So you have no Inverts at all in the tank?

 

[vetteguy53081]

A while ago I posted asking about what disease my fish had and no one seemed to have the answer. Lost a lot of fish except a rabbit fish and tessalata eel seemed to be immune to whatever it was and theyre still kickin. My question is now how to restart this tank, as I will be moving the survivors to a new tank to be on their own for a bit.

Its a 300 gallon and i do FOWLR. My thoughts were to just drain and clean. A LFS employee told me I could add bleach to the system once I removed the livestock and that would rid the tank of any disease but he didnt have a lot of detail on how to do that.

My question is, whats my best course of action to restart the tank?

Vinegar/water and vinegar/water acceptable methods followed by cold water rinse
Depending on disease, with a Fowler you can add coppersafe if much or velvet and ruby rally pro for others followed by prazi pro

 

[robbym89]

If you add bleach to the tank , you will have to restart the entire cycling process over again, and unless you pull all the live rock and sand out and thoroughly rinse it , any little critters or sponge that left in it is going to just decompose and fuel a horrible ugly stage that would probably take months to clear up. It sucks but you could leave the tank fallow for a couple months and keep your salinity at like 1.019 and the parasite would die off since it has no host. So you have no Inverts at all in the tank?

no inverts. I think i would rather cycle again anyway. and since whatever disease remains unidentified, how do we know that fallow period would work? wouldnt a drain and restart with new sand/rocks work the same

 

[Jay Hemdal]

no inverts. I think i would rather cycle again anyway. and since whatever disease remains unidentified, how do we know that fallow period would work? wouldnt a drain and restart with new sand/rocks work the same

Bleach will pretty much completely sterilize a tank at 500ppm for 24 hours. The trick is though, you need to get pure bleach, with no added surfactants thickening agents or perfumes, and that is tough to find. I found some at GFS that was just 5.25% sodium hypochlorite and water - that's what you need. THEN the big issue is how to dose it to 500 ppm! I'm not big on math, but 500 ppm in a 300 gallon tank would be: 500 * 300 / 264 = 570 ml of bleach I think.

 

[robbym89]

Bleach will pretty much completely sterilize a tank at 500ppm for 24 hours. The trick is though, you need to get pure bleach, with no added surfactants thickening agents or perfumes, and that is tough to find. I found some at GFS that was just 5.25% sodium hypochlorite and water - that's what you need. THEN the big issue is how to dose it to 500 ppm! I'm not big on math, but 500 ppm in a 300 gallon tank would be: 500 * 300 / 264 = 570 ml of bleach I think.

Thank you. one question though, what does GFS stand for lol

 

[jcmjoe]

no inverts. I think i would rather cycle again anyway. and since whatever disease remains unidentified, how do we know that fallow period would work? wouldnt a drain and restart with new sand/rocks work the same

I didn’t realize you were getting all new sand and rock, in that case a drain and restart would be much simpler! I hope all goes well for you!

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Thank you. one question though, what does GFS stand for lol

Sorry - Gordon Food Services, a regional food supply company in the US. They often sell to institutions like schools, but in our area, they have retail stores.

 

[MnFish1]

A while ago I posted asking about what disease my fish had and no one seemed to have the answer. Lost a lot of fish except a rabbit fish and tessalata eel seemed to be immune to whatever it was and theyre still kickin. My question is now how to restart this tank, as I will be moving the survivors to a new tank to be on their own for a bit.

Its a 300 gallon and i do FOWLR. My thoughts were to just drain and clean. A LFS employee told me I could add bleach to the system once I removed the livestock and that would rid the tank of any disease but he didnt have a lot of detail on how to do that.

My question is, whats my best course of action to restart the tank?

I'm not sure except if there is an algae issue that 'cleaning' has any role. Most of any diseases that would be present will die off with a fallow period - and starting over has its own problems. I would let it be fallow for 3 months.

 

[MnFish1]

no inverts. I think i would rather cycle again anyway. and since whatever disease remains unidentified, how do we know that fallow period would work? wouldnt a drain and restart with new sand/rocks work the same

How do you know that restarting will work? I mean the disease came from somewhere right?It's a matter of odds - I would do it the way jay hemdal suggested - If you're dead set on it. For a 300 gallon tank - I would say - it's a pretty expensive measure with very little potential benefit - can you point back to the thread you're talking about - where people didn't know what it was. Of course realizing that in many many cases its impossible to be 'sure' what a disease process is - based on the information received