So this week has been abit of a nightmare for me.

Things started out fine I did my usual water changes at the weekend and pootled off to work Monday morning.

I came in Monday night did a quick water test on the tanks (as I always do 24h after a water change to ensure everything has settled) and went to bed.

On tuesday morning I came downstairs to find that the 2 back hanging filters on the 200 litre tank had packed up and the little external had clogged up ARRG I gotta get to work!
Quickly cracked open the external filter and ripped out the floss style wool basket as I knew immediately that was what was blocking it.  Stuck it all back together and fired it back up so at least the tank had some form of filtration.  Turned the back 2 filters off as they were no good to anyone and I didn’t fancy burning out the pump motors.  I did a quick water change of about 30 litres checked all the other tanks were ok as I usually do and went off  to work.  I came back from work to find most of my guppies had kicked the bucket! The guppies are in a different 55 litre tank. Seriously whats going on here today.  Then I notice the tank temperature the heater in the tank had died presumably sometime in the morning so by time I made it back 12 hours later the water temperature had tanked down to 15 degrees and killed all but 3 guppies.
I quickly scooped up the 3 remaining and stuck them in my tiny tiny pleco breeding tank.  So far no more have died now.

I then tore down the 55 litre tank cleaned it all up replanted it and new substrate under the gravel etc refilled with nice fresh water all clean and set it running.  To maintain the temperature I boiled a LARGE chunk of bog wood for about 4 hours and stuck it in the tank.  This worked as a brilliant passive heat source for the next 24 hours while I waited for the tank to quickly stabalize (with 500ml worth of stability chucked in too!)  Luckily the filter for the tank was still upto speed so I didn’t have to wait for it to regrow all its bacteria.
I then transfered all the guppies and baby pleco’s from the breeding tank into the 55 litre tank along with its working heater and what was my old breeding tank is now just being used for growing plants in.

For the 200 litre tank I ordered a Tetratec IN 1000 pump for £30 from VioVet.  I was ideally wanting a Fluval 4 plus with ventrui power head but can I bugger find them sold anywhere so I had to settle for the Tetratech one.  Not that its a bad pump (expect a review in a month or so’s time).

Long and short I’m currently down 1 tank thankfully abit of quick fiddling and apart from the guppies I’ve not lost any other fish and caught everything intime.

Its been a busy week 🙁