Rock bottom and digging! Extermination...

Some of you may remember that we have been having a serious bug issue in our house. Our neighbors hosted a friend of their sons who brought home bedbugs. They came through the townhouse walls and into our bedroom upstairs. The only way to get rid of the buggers is to spray the foundations of the walls and bomb the house. The snakes and other animals will be inconvenient, but not impossible, to move. The fish tanks on the other hand... I am more-or-less out of the fish scene at this point, with the exception of 4 tanks-- a 75 gallon mbuna tank, 55 gallon mixed community, a 50 gallon with one lone wolf-fish and the 10 gallon marine.

I am not sure what to do with them. I don't like any of my options. I don't think I would trust sealing them up in any way and leaving the fish in them. Our fish are pretty large... so I am not sure they'd survive more than a few hours in bags. I also considered this as a sign that it's time to get completely out of the hobby... a sign to see about trading my fish in to Exotic Aquatics in Parkville... at least they would have a chance there. Last year I had a meltdown in my 75 that was likely caused by chemicals... I would not want to see that happen to them again. It was awful... I lost almost every single fish in that tank. I need to do something with them but I am not sure what to do at this point.

If anyone has any advice, pertinent or not... I'd love to hear it. I've had pretty much the worst summer in recent memory, so no suggestion you make will be ill-received.

Lauren & Tara

it would be a pain in the you-know-where, but could you move the tanks to another building temporarily?

starsevol said:

it would be a pain in the you-know-where, but could you move the tanks to another building temporarily?

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Simply put, no... with the exception of the marine. The others are so large that to move them would take weeks... I had to do that to get them here from my old classroom. It was a b**** and a half.... my mother said we could put them in small tanks/bins in her basement if we want... I am just worried they would not survive that. Some of them are pretty aggressive.

Hypancistrus said:

Simply put, no... with the exception of the marine. The others are so large that to move them would take weeks... I had to do that to get them here from my old classroom. It was a b**** and a half.... my mother said we could put them in small tanks/bins in her basement if we want... I am just worried they would not survive that. Some of them are pretty aggressive.

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Then maybe if you did the marine that way, at least you wouldnt have to worry about them anyway. I wonder if you did what your mother suggested, and maybe put them only one to a tank....
I'm sorry, I have never had to move fish like this before.
I hope things go well for you (you 2 ladies deserve to have something go right this summer.....)

I would ask Lboz...

What I did when I raised fish, is put them in 5 gallon buckets, with portable air pumps. Some pet stores will "baby-sit" fish, for a small fee. I would DEFINITELY not leave the tanks in a home that was to be fumigated. The fear being that the toxins would be water soluble. It does not take long to tear a tank down. just an hour or two. If you keep the water that came out, you can have the tank back up and running in 3-4 hours as well. I moved my tank 3 times. It was a 125. Talk about heavy!!

Ok, if you're willing to take a bit of a calculated risk, here's what I'd do in that circumstance.

Some fumigations are done with heat, so you need to find out if that's what's being done. If it is, the fish will have to be relocated.

If you're talking 24 hours evacuation, the tanks can be wrapped and sealed, and the oxygen in the water will last. 48 hours would be a stretch, but if there are any plants in the tank things will be fine for at least that long. Heater temps can be dropped a bit to avoid thermal runaway. As I say, if it was my house, I'd put one layer of heavy plastic painting tarp, duct taped in place all around about half-way down the side of the tank and duct taped along every single possible seam in the plastic. Then I'd follow that up by at least one more layer, taped just below the first, all seams sealed. As a hyper-cautious final, another layer taped around the bottom edge of the sides, again with the seams sealed.

If you carefully reverse the process, removing the outer layer by folding it on top of itself, dispose of it, wipe things down, repeat the removal and cleaning with the second layer, then remove the last layer, you'd be sure to get all the residue from the fumigation before the last layer comes off.

Chances are extremely high that they'll be using pyrethrins or pyrethroxins, which zap the nervous systems of invertebrates but are harmless to anything with a spine - except fish. A fumigation will get into cracks and crevices, and that's why multiple layers are required. The stuff will dry to an invisible powder residue, but there won't be enough after fumigation to worry about - the main concern is not to get the relatively-high-concentration stuff straight in the tank.

Standard disclaimers apply, use at your own risk, etc. etc. etc. But that's what I'd do if it were my fish.