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Thread: Dead Catfish

  1. #1
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    Aug 2015
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    Dead Catfish

    I went out to feed my fish the other day and all three of my catfish were dead. I bought these three little guys on the same day when they were only 3-4 inches long and when they passed were 8-12 inches each. About a day or two before they died I was adding water to the sump tank and forgot about it. I came back four hours later to a giant mess! The fish tank seemed okay, even my sump tank Plecos stayed put in the tank. I added water from the hose with a hose filter attachment. The manufacturer for the hose filter states it can filter up to 10,000 gallons of water and I had already been using this for a couple months. I tested my levels and everything was at 0. My tomato plants even drastically slowed their production since the incident.

    Ammonia-0 Nitrite-0 Nitrate-0


    If Chlorine did get into the tank and kill the microorganisms could that have killed the Catfish and left all other fish alive? Should I expect to lose more fish? Does it take just as long to restart a tank as it does to start a new tank?

    Any help is greatly appreciated, thank you!!

  2. #2
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    Jan 2014
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    Edmonton, Canada
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    The problem with chlorine is that if it doesn't outright kill fish, it destroys their gill membrane. Most fish just can't recover. Once the chlorine has gassed out of your system, you should see about re-seeding it with bacteria. Do you have a neighbor with a koi pond or a fish tank? You can borrow the sponge/filter from that and squeeze the gunk out of it into your beds/filter/fish tank, and that will get things going again quicker than just waiting for the bacteria to repopulate on their own.
    Jason M.

  3. #3
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    Join Date
    Aug 2015
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    Hey Jason,

    Thanks for the advice. I do have a neighbor with an aquaponics setup as well so I can mix in some of his grow media and water into mine to restart things. I have about 35 Bluegill in the tank that look a little sluggish right now, hopefully they can survive through this!

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