rwhhunt
New member
THIS IS A SERIOUS WARNING TO ALL INDIVIDUALS WHO LIKE TO MAKE JELLO IN LARGE QUANTITIES!!!!!
Last weekend I threw a large back to school party. We made 1200 jello shots in our apartment over the course of 36 hours. I started on Thursday night and made 300 jello shots (8 pitchers of jello) and cooled them in my fridge. The next morning I noticed the three tanks in my kitchen and living room (55, 30, 10) were slightly cloudy. I first figured the glass needed to be cleaned, after I cleaned it and found it still slitghly cloudy, I figured my eel had kicked up some sand...but all three tanks were cloudy...so maybe it was time for some water changes.. Well I made another 300 in the afternoon, and then my roomate made another 600 that evening while I was at work. So I thought the filters would clear up the tanks while I was at work.... I had also just ran out of Clarity as well..... Well I get a call from my roommate who told me that my 10 gal tank (closest to the kitchen) was extremely cloudy and the fish were dying and floating on the surface gasping for air....I had now idea what was going on... I finally get home, and all the tanks in the house (in progresively worse cloudiness from the kitchen) were almost white and all the fish were NOT DOING WELL to say the least.. Even the two tanks upstairs were worsening by the hour!! I freaked out because I had about $700 worth of livestock (all FO or FOWLR tanks: 55, 30, 26, 10, 5)... I immediately sped to the grocery and bought 15 gallons of RO water, while a kept my tap water filter filling buckets while I was gone. I then bought 50 gal worth of oceanic salt, and hecticly began doing massive water changes!
After a while of trying to figure out what the hell happened; I finally realized that while I was pouring the packs of jello into the pitcher and pouring bioling water on it, I was inadvertently emmitting large amounts of gelatin into the air as a gas or fine particulate matter!!!!!
The tanks were actually congealing and the fish were suffocating due to the thick consistency of the water! I couldn't physically feel a change in density, but the optical properties were significantly altered!!!!
I removed the two floating puffers gasping for air in the 10 gal (that were presumed dead) and put them in a 5 gal bucket with fresh water of equal salinity; These guys quickly came back to LIFE! I put an airstone in the bucket to aerate the water... Then I did a 90% water change on the 10 gal (which was the worse tank), I then did a 40% water change on my 55 gal, a 40% change on my 30 gal, a 30% change on my 26 (upstairs) and a 15% change on my 5 gal (in my room, so it was the clearest, but still cloudy....) I then repeated 20% water changes on the 55, 30, 26 again after that because the tanks only looked nominally better... I added a bag of carbon to my 55, but by this time the LFS were all closed and was not able to go buy any extra clarity or carbon... I was quite upset, and it was friday night..So since I had done all I could do, I ended up going downtown... When I get home around 2:30 am, the 55 was so cloudy, you couldn't even see through it! After a bit of contemplation, i figured out that the pump to the remora skimmer had fallen off and was blasting sand up everywhere....well, that certaintly did not help my situation..... I fix it and got to sleep . The next morning, I went and bought three packs of PURIGEN and a bottle of Clarity, and put the packs in the larger tanks, and emergency levels of Clarity in all the tanks. I only lost three fish out of 16... longnose butterfly, mono argentenus, and mandarin dragonet. After about two - three days, the water finally cleared to pre-disaster clarity. Unfortunately I was in such a rush to fix everything, I never took any pics of the tanks... But everything is much better now, and I have been feeding every one numerous times a day to get their health back in order. I had a small outbreak of ICH in the 55 with the coral beauty and auriga butterfly, but since the highly nutritious and frequent feedings, everyone now is health. The only remaing problem is that my anemone has not fully recovered and has been acting wierd, always trying to climb down from the LR and lay around on the bottom of the tank, and it will not take any food.... SO hopefully, over time it will recooperate as well...
SO, I thought this was an incredible and BIZARRE story, that everyone should be aware of the dangers of making massive amounts of JELLO near their Aquariums!!!!!
BTW, my mantis, didn't seem to be bothered as much by the situation as the fish did....
Last weekend I threw a large back to school party. We made 1200 jello shots in our apartment over the course of 36 hours. I started on Thursday night and made 300 jello shots (8 pitchers of jello) and cooled them in my fridge. The next morning I noticed the three tanks in my kitchen and living room (55, 30, 10) were slightly cloudy. I first figured the glass needed to be cleaned, after I cleaned it and found it still slitghly cloudy, I figured my eel had kicked up some sand...but all three tanks were cloudy...so maybe it was time for some water changes.. Well I made another 300 in the afternoon, and then my roomate made another 600 that evening while I was at work. So I thought the filters would clear up the tanks while I was at work.... I had also just ran out of Clarity as well..... Well I get a call from my roommate who told me that my 10 gal tank (closest to the kitchen) was extremely cloudy and the fish were dying and floating on the surface gasping for air....I had now idea what was going on... I finally get home, and all the tanks in the house (in progresively worse cloudiness from the kitchen) were almost white and all the fish were NOT DOING WELL to say the least.. Even the two tanks upstairs were worsening by the hour!! I freaked out because I had about $700 worth of livestock (all FO or FOWLR tanks: 55, 30, 26, 10, 5)... I immediately sped to the grocery and bought 15 gallons of RO water, while a kept my tap water filter filling buckets while I was gone. I then bought 50 gal worth of oceanic salt, and hecticly began doing massive water changes!
After a while of trying to figure out what the hell happened; I finally realized that while I was pouring the packs of jello into the pitcher and pouring bioling water on it, I was inadvertently emmitting large amounts of gelatin into the air as a gas or fine particulate matter!!!!!
The tanks were actually congealing and the fish were suffocating due to the thick consistency of the water! I couldn't physically feel a change in density, but the optical properties were significantly altered!!!!
I removed the two floating puffers gasping for air in the 10 gal (that were presumed dead) and put them in a 5 gal bucket with fresh water of equal salinity; These guys quickly came back to LIFE! I put an airstone in the bucket to aerate the water... Then I did a 90% water change on the 10 gal (which was the worse tank), I then did a 40% water change on my 55 gal, a 40% change on my 30 gal, a 30% change on my 26 (upstairs) and a 15% change on my 5 gal (in my room, so it was the clearest, but still cloudy....) I then repeated 20% water changes on the 55, 30, 26 again after that because the tanks only looked nominally better... I added a bag of carbon to my 55, but by this time the LFS were all closed and was not able to go buy any extra clarity or carbon... I was quite upset, and it was friday night..So since I had done all I could do, I ended up going downtown... When I get home around 2:30 am, the 55 was so cloudy, you couldn't even see through it! After a bit of contemplation, i figured out that the pump to the remora skimmer had fallen off and was blasting sand up everywhere....well, that certaintly did not help my situation..... I fix it and got to sleep . The next morning, I went and bought three packs of PURIGEN and a bottle of Clarity, and put the packs in the larger tanks, and emergency levels of Clarity in all the tanks. I only lost three fish out of 16... longnose butterfly, mono argentenus, and mandarin dragonet. After about two - three days, the water finally cleared to pre-disaster clarity. Unfortunately I was in such a rush to fix everything, I never took any pics of the tanks... But everything is much better now, and I have been feeding every one numerous times a day to get their health back in order. I had a small outbreak of ICH in the 55 with the coral beauty and auriga butterfly, but since the highly nutritious and frequent feedings, everyone now is health. The only remaing problem is that my anemone has not fully recovered and has been acting wierd, always trying to climb down from the LR and lay around on the bottom of the tank, and it will not take any food.... SO hopefully, over time it will recooperate as well...
SO, I thought this was an incredible and BIZARRE story, that everyone should be aware of the dangers of making massive amounts of JELLO near their Aquariums!!!!!
BTW, my mantis, didn't seem to be bothered as much by the situation as the fish did....
