Go through a definitive guide on how to sterilize fish tank after fish died to make your aquarium a safer habitat and reduce the death ratio of the finishes.
Nothing can be more aesthetically soothing than a fish tank in your house full of beautiful fishes. But maintaining a fish tank and keeping the fishes alive is not the easiest task in the world. It’s actually a pretty common thing that some fish will die in your aquarium for many reasons.
How to Sterilize Fish Tank After Fish Died
However, you need to sterilize the fish tank before you add any other fishes inside, as it might contain harmful bacterias and parasites. To help you with that, let’s go over an in-depth tutorial on how to sterilize fish tank after fish died that’s easy to follow.
What Happens After a Fish Dies in the Fish Tank
If you don’t put the dead fish away immediately after it’s dead, the body will start to rot polluting the water. It’s going to increase the bacterias in the water, and before you know it, the whole tank would be full of hazardous bacterias and parasites.
These are super harmful to all the healthy fishes, and it can easily get them sick. If you are concerned about the fishes in your water tank, you must follow the right methods to keep them safe. Down below, we’ll discuss more on how you can do that with step by step guide.
Get the Tools
Before you move on to treating the aquarium, you need to have some basic tools in place. These are nothing fancy, and you’ll find these easily at local grocery stores and pet shops.
- Siphon and a tiny bowl or bucket
- Algae pad
- Bleach solution to cleanse
- Thermometer to check the temperature
- Decholarinator to cleanse the water
- Filter bacteria boost
- And a basic aquarium test kit
Once you’ve got these in place, you can move on to sterilizing the water tank after a fish died.
5 Steps to Sterilize Fish Tank After Fish Died
Let’s go over a simple 5 step method that you can use to sterilize a fish tank after fish died.
Step 1: Take Out the Fishes from the Tank
As soon as a fish dies, the first thing you need to do is take out all the other fishes from the fish tank. That’s going to help stop the spread of the disease, which will reduce the death ratio of the healthy fishes by a lot. You can just put the fishes in another temporary tank that’s clean.
Step 2: Remove Anything Else
After removing the fishes from the tank, it’s time to remove all the other objects that are inside the tank. That includes all kinds of decorative stuff, driftwood, toys, rocks, etc. Take out as much as you can in that case, and don’t forget the lights, filter, or any other pumps.
After that, there should be only substrates left in the tank, and people don’t tend to give any emphasis on replacing those. But it’s actually very important to change it to avoid the risk of the disease from spreading. You can clean it as well, but it’s way better to get rid of it and replace it completely.
Step 3: Using a Cleaning Solution
You can go for any commercial cleaning solution or make your cleaning solution to clean the water tank. Just put 10 parts of water and 1 part of bleach together and mix it well, and that should give you a great solution.
Use it on the interior and the exterior of the aquarium to clean it, and make sure to be thorough about it. Once you are one, rinse the solvent off of the aquarium properly. Any leftover solution will irritate the fishes, and you don’t want that to happen. So, make sure to wash off the solvent properly before you move on to the next steps.
Step 4: Cleaning the Filter
After cleaning the aquarium, it’s time to clean the filter as well to ensure that everything is properly disinfected. You should go for a replacement of the media if the disease was too bad and more than one fish died. That’s going to get rid of all the good bacterias that help to keep the fishes healthy. But you have to get rid of everything if you want to make sure that any other fish don’t get infected by the same disease.
Also, make sure to clean the filter with the bleach solution, and be very thorough about it. And be sure to rinse off any solution that’s left off that might be harmful to the fishes.
Step 5: Clean the Additional Stuff
Now that you are done with the aquarium and the filter, the final thing you need to do is to clean the extras such as the lights, plants, rocks, etc. Use the same bleach solution that you used previously, and make sure that you don’t ruin any electrical stuff while cleaning it.
Make sure to be as thorough as you can while doing so and take your time with it. Once you are done, you can just put everything back in place and make the aquarium ready to use once again. Finally, put the water and the fishes back in, and it should be a great habitat for the fishes by now. Also, make sure to do regular maintenance and check-ups to keep everything perfectly in tune as well.
Final Thoughts
These were the steps on how to sterilize fish tank after fish died that you should follow before adding any fish to the tank. That’s going to help you reduce the death rate of new fishes significantly.
You must remember that once a fish dies, the parasites and bacterias can be very harmful to the healthy fishes. If you don’t do anything about it, that’s going to mess with them as well. So, make sure to follow the instructions properly, and you’ll have an aquarium that has a healthy habitat for the fishes.
Writer: Shyran Khan Joy