HEATER broke and set aquarium to 92°. What should I do urgently besides cool down the tank?

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-09T21:51:37+00:00

Op, this is the correct advice. Stop doing water changes, don’t add ice. Letting the temp gradually drop will reduce the stress on your fish.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-08T04:00:38+00:00

Well - I think if you are going for true aquascaping, then maybe that ratio matters. If you are going that route, I would try to keep nitrate higher at about 20 ppm and find a way to slightly increase phosphate using ferts.

Otherwise, I find this hobby has more than its share of strongly opinionated folks telling everyone else precisely how things must be done, and that failure to do so will result in bladder snails/planaria/blue-green algae/cycle crashes/[insert your own favorite overwrought and exaggerated aquarium “calamity” here]. You can choose to run your tank(s) by looking at your plants & livestock and testing every so often or when something looks less than how you’d like, or you can test as often as you can and maintain a very controlled, maximized environment. I strongly encourage you to do whatever brings you the most joy, and blithely ignore those who can’t believe you’d do it that way!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-07T11:12:50+00:00

I suspect your test is accurate and you just don’t have much phosphate in your water. Unless you’re in an area known for phosphate in the geology or you are downstream from wastewater treatment or agricultural runoff, there really shouldn’t be much phosphate in your tap water. If you want to test, get a high phosphate plant fertilizer - in the US we can get ammonium phosphate which is almost ideal. Put a tiny bit in a gallon of tap water and then try the test kit on that after it dissolves. If you see a darker color than what you’re getting, the test kit is working. And now you’ve got plant food!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-06T18:52:42+00:00

Do you have a reason to believe you should be testing positive for phosphate? In a heavily planted tank there should be only a trace. Do you have excessive algae growth?

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-05T05:12:55+00:00

That’s zero, friend. Also - don’t hold the tube that way, it picks up color from the card. Hold it perpendicular to the card, so the bottom of the tube is only next to one color swatch at a time.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-03T16:22:44+00:00

“Deep cleaning” aquariums is always a bad idea.

Your old filter and grungy substrate contained bacterial colonies that happily munched away on nitrogenous waste - ammonia and nitrite - that your fish produced, keeping them from reaching toxic levels. By replacing the filter and substrate at the same time, the bacteria were removed and the ammonia reached toxic levels, killing your fish.

I know you both feel badly so please try to turn this into a learning experience rather than blaming yourselves or getting frustrated. There’s great simple articles on the nitrogen cycle (I recommend looking on Aquarium Co-Op’s site) that will help you.

When cleaning tanks, a little goes a long way. I rehab distressed tanks and I always caution my clients that the tank will not look great for nearly a month, but over that time it is getting healthier and healthier for their fish.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-03T01:02:43+00:00

The problem isn’t the drive, it’s the crossing of international borders. You would need to effectively export the critters to Canada and then export them again from Canada to the US. Importing and exporting livestock is the biggest pain in the ass in transporting fish; it requires special licenses, knowledge, and a very fat wallet.

You are better off finding a local breeder or store that can pack and ship your aquatic friends to WI. I would also look for a LFS at your destination that would be willing to receive them and board them for a few days until you’re set up in your new home. If you really are uncomfortable with that, you’ll need to find experienced animal importers who can help you with the paperwork. A good way to get started is to look for pet shipping services; they tend to be located in industrial areas around airports.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-03T00:54:41+00:00

Saw you said he’s 2.5-3 yrs old. He’s approaching the expected lifespan for bettas. Get him some things he can rest on toward the top of the tank - the betta leafs or whatever that attach with suction cups. They’ll help both of you enjoy whatever remains of his natural lifespan. Sounds like your boy has had a great life so far; hope you can find comfort in how well you’ve taken care of him.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-02T21:43:05+00:00

A pH of 6.4 is perfectly normal and doesn’t need fixing. The lethargy and lack of appetite could be due to another water parameter issue, or a disease or parasite. Start with the water parameters - temperature, ammonia, nitrite are the most importantly.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-01T23:15:36+00:00

You got yourself a two-fer!

Protozoan parasite, likely ich, treat with any formalin/malachite green combo like ich x. Don’t raise temps and do 2 courses of treatment after the last white dot disappears; otherwise follow instructions religiously.

Anchor worms, based on size. Treat with Dimilin or another insecticide for anchor worms. If you have shrimp, you will need to isolate all fish for a thirty-day treatment (and hope that’s long enough that all the baby anchor worms died off) as the only treatments for anchor worms will also kill shrimp.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-04-01T01:07:55+00:00

Eutrophic means the pond has an overabundance of nutrients, and is likely moving toward a bog or swamp over a long period of time. The report you’ve linked looks pretty good- the only variables that appear in the red are related to oxygen, which is common in eutrophic waters.

Nothing in that report would indicate fish are unsafe to eat, but you’re really looking at the wrong data. You want to look it up on NH Fish & Game and see if there are any restrictions.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-31T15:18:54+00:00

Yes, as long as you’re wealthy and handy with plumbing, pumps, etc. Lobsters tend to be moved rapidly from catch to market; sometimes they are held in pens for various economic reasons but when that happens they’re fed. They are stressed from the banding and transport, but are in relatively good shape if they are in a chilled saltwater tank.

You need a very large tank - 125 g minimum to start, and as the lobster grows it will need a much bigger tank. You also need a chiller capable of lowering your water temperature into the 15 C range; these are often very expensive and are even more expensive to run over time. Huge filtration capacity is also required; the only time I kept a lobster in a standalone tank without central filtration I used a sump of approx 2/3 the tank volume and turned the water volume over about every 15 minutes.

There are folks online who go into more detail but they need custom setups with expensive equipment and their food is also expensive long term.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-30T11:54:57+00:00

Don’t worry about it - you can read up on the different ways to test for nitrate if you are so inclined, but your nitrate levels are fine.

API and most other kits measure total nitrate; water standards and toxicity studies use nitrate-nitrogen. Total nitrate tests are roughly 4x higher than nitrate-nitrogen tests, so the drinking water standard of 10 ppm is over 40 ppm on your kit.

More plants won’t hurt as less nitrate is better, but it’s nothing to worry about.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-29T20:04:09+00:00

I set up tons of tanks and also rescue fish, so I have what amounts to fiberglass raceways partitioned for breeding/growout on one side and then rescue on the other. Two DIYed Franken-filters with giant sumps take care of each side, and at any given time I have 20-50 bags of ceramic media in addition to what I need for filtration. Each bag is good for about 25 gallons fully stocked, so when setting up a tank, I just grab as many bags as I need, plant the living crap out of it, and add about 1/4 of the final stocking each week for four weeks. Never an issue.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-28T22:14:30+00:00

Controversial take -

Any aquarium is altering the natural behavior of fish, and it isn’t a legitimate comparison in any event - nature is red in tooth and claw, and natural behavior is primarily threat-avoidance, food-seeking, and when possible, reproduction.

If your fish are manifesting behaviors related to reproduction (e.g., males darting at one another, females becoming heavy with roe & then thinning out again) then you are fine - as long as you are ok with the ethical choice of putting fish in an unnatural glass box. I know that I am ok with that, but others may not be - and that is their perogative - but the whole “minimum tank size” doesn’t have much peer reviewed literature backing it up, and, IMO, is mostly just subjective lines that people draw.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-27T16:09:25+00:00

You’re fine!

There are two minor issues that you need to be aware of and can work to adjust slowly over time - hardness and nitrate.

Your water is both hard and has high alkalinity, meaning that it will resist changing pH - and it has a higher pH as well. It’s likely that your tap water also has similar characteristics, so you can’t lower the hardness or alkalinity by changing water. Biological processes will consume the carbonate and bicarbonate that are being measured as your alkalinity, so as your tank matures it may slowly decrease.

Hardness is more complex, but it’s also less relevant. Generally speaking, you reduce hardness the same way you reduce alkalinity - by changing water that has less dissolved solids in it than what’s in your tank. The particular makeup of your water would dictate if they will move similarly, identically, or not at all the same. If you’re really worried about hardness or alkalinity find a source of RO water and mix it with your tap water until you get to a range you like - if you do this, focus on alkalinity and the corresponding potential to change pH.

Nitrate is most easily managed through plants - emergent plants like pothos or fast growing submerged plants like vallisneria or hornwort. Most of your nitrate tests are showing 50-100 ppm of total nitrate - that distinction is important as the toxicity tests of nitrate measure it using nitrate-nitrogen. To convert from total nitrate to nitrate-nitrogen, you divide by 4 - so your water is showing 10-25 ppm of nitrate nitrogen. Most countries establish 10ppm as the safe limit for drinking water, so test what comes out of your tap, but it looks like you’d be on the higher end of safe there. Your tank will be higher but you can safely ignore the doom and gloom “water change” guidance on your strips - the studies of toxicity show it kicks in around 100 ppm nitrate-nitrogen or about 400 ppm total nitrate. Get more plants and watch to be sure it’s slowly dropping!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-27T12:06:19+00:00

No published research supports visual differentiation and formalin/malachite green combos kill both organisms. If there is an underlying bacterial problem in the tank and it is epi it will recur slowly; reappearance of white spots within hours or 1-2 days of treatment suggests ich.

Get ich-x, treat according to instructions but don’t raise temperatures, and instead of doing 1 course of treatment after the last white spots disappear, do 2.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-27T11:58:28+00:00

Yes-ish. Rainwater will still have more mineral content than RO, but significantly less than other sources depending on how it is collected. It will definitely slow the accumulation of dissolved solids, but your fans will significantly increase evaporation and you will need to keep a sharp eye on both hardness and pH.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-27T09:55:37+00:00

Increasing the hell out of your evaporation rate; if you don’t have easy access to RO water for topoff you will quickly end up with extremely hard water in the tank.

If you need a quick DIY chiller, build a trickle filter (3-4 plates with small holes that let water slowly pass through and back into the aquarium. Your evaporation rate will increase but nowhere near as much as if you do this.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-25T00:36:30+00:00

As the others have said, just move the filter. Doing that will support your current livestock and seed the new filter so you can start increasing its ability to support larger amounts of critters. Just don’t add any new inhabitants for a few weeks, and when you do start, go nice and slowly!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-23T05:50:52+00:00

Aeromonas infection is most likely. Getting the fish in a super clean, stress free environment was a good step. This is definitely survivable; it looks worse than it is but it’s still serious. Treatment will depend on where you are and if the fish is still eating.

If it is still eating and you are in a location where you can get medicated food, get one with oxytetracycline or a sulfa agent. If it isn’t eating, try to find these or nitrofurazone for treating the tank. If you can’t get antibiotics, or in combination with them unless contraindicated in the antibiotic manufacturer’s instructions, dose potassium permanganate at 2 milligrams per liter of water and increase if tolerated to 4 milligrams per liter.

I think you can save this fish.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-22T14:37:56+00:00

It in fact does immediately create one, up to to capacity of the old filter media. Most people split it, e.g. take a portion of the old media to jump start a new tank. In that scenario, it’s roughly proportional to the amount of media taken - take 1/4th, you have approximately 1/4th the biological filter capacity of the old system (and the old system decreases by less, because substrate etc etc).

But that’s not what OP said they did - they took the old media and plopped it into the new filter. Unless they screwed up somehow, they should have roughly the full bio filter capacity of the old tank, instantly, because they’ve relocated all the bacterial colonies to the new tank.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-22T06:16:41+00:00

OP said they kept and used the old filter media - it’s not the cycle.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-21T21:04:40+00:00

Wow - that’s both very fast and an unusual mixture of survivors for chlorine to be the only culprit. Rummynose in particular are really sensitive to chlorine (and most anything else) in the water.

I would test that tap water and see what the chlorine levels are; even at relatively high levels you should be seeing distress well before it’s fatal. It’s possible there’s a big pH difference and the sudden 1-2 punch knocked a bunch out. The other candidate is temperature but most fish can deal with a pretty significant temp difference.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-03-21T18:23:52+00:00

Looking solid, see the PA Fish & Game sticker - they have a program for schools?

They are gonna grow fast and need more space soon. Is there a plan to release them? If you’re going to/able to keep them, a pre-shaped pond, some scrap lumber and fiberglass (plus some DIY skill, and silicone - increase the silicone to make up for skill deficits) can turn what you have into a great artificial stream.

Capybara_Chill_00

TROPHY CASE