Undergravel Carbon cartridge spilt in tank, fish turning black!??!?

Question

I have a 28 gallon tank with 2 goldfish in it. They will be just about 2 years old here soon.

Recently while cleaning the tank, one of my "carbon cartridges" that are part of my undergravel filter came apart spilling little pieces of charcoal or whatever is used in them into the gravel. I cleaned it all up very quickly, but in the last couple of weeks the fish are becomming covered in black. It looks almost like they are wearing war paint on their bodies/face.

Are my fish in danger? They won't let me touch them to try and clean it off. Has anyone heard/seen something like this before??

And just for the record, my tank doesn't rely soley on the ug filter. I have a regular filter with the tank as well.

Any suggestions??

Answer 1

I would agree to a point here with Venice - I doubt that the cause is the carbon, unless very fine particles would be adhering to their slime coats. And if you had particles that fine, it would have been washed out of the filter prior to your "accident", so this would have happened before.

The black markings might be due to ammonia, but they can be caused by other chemicals in the water as well. Have you used anything in your tank (apart from what's used to remove chlorine/chloramine if you use tapwater)? This would include salt, medications, algacides, plant fertilizers? If so, you may have used too high of a concentration, and this has caused a "chemical burn" on the fish. This would especially be true if when you did water changes, you added a full dose of the product, rather than just the amount needed to replace what was removed by the water change (unless specifically directed to add the full amount by the product's indtructions).

Also, if your water company uses chloramine to treat the water, and you use a conditioner that only removes chlorine (or "breaks the chloramine bond"), this is a source of ammonia - chloramine is the combination of chlorine and ammonia molecules. A call to your water company can help you determine if this is your problem.

Answer 2

Are you sure it's just the carbon that's turning them black? It could be ammonia burns, which, actually, by the time it turns black, means the skin is healing, but nevertheless, have you/are you testing your water? If not, I would test your water and see where that's at. Next, if it's really carbon stuck on them (I think that's odd), there really isn't anything you can do but just let it wear off. It is a neutral element as far as toxicity but, it can suffocate if it gets in their gills too heavily, which I kinda doubt it could do what with being in water constantly. Besides, if you replaced the filter, any loose carbon should have filtered out after 2 weeks. I'm assuming that you clean your tank every week, so that also should've cleaned up spilled carbon. I'm just not going with the carbon angle. I'm still leaning towards ammonia poisoning......

Answer 3

you're able to alter your carbon filter out (the cartridge) each month. Carbon removes any odors from the water, the yellowness, and any medicine or chemical compounds that could get into the water. It won't harm your fish in case you do no longer exchange the carbon. i'm guessing, nonetheless, that your carbon is in a filter out cartridge and those can get grimy. no longer that being grimy will harm your fish, yet is the filter out cartridge gets clogged, it cuts back on the quantity of water being grew to become over on your tank, and in intense circumstances, it may reason the filter out to over bypass. you are able to no longer upload gravel on your filter out to help with filtration. counting on your filter out, you are able to upload extra media if area helps. some filters contain baskets to characteristic extra media - like extra carbon, zeo-lites, filter out floss, bio-balls, lava rocks, and so on. If there is area, i might upload something for micro organism, like the bio balls. As for what different issues you're able to do to help your filter out, filter out your tank - determine you're no longer over feeding. save up on water transformations. make beneficial the impeller does not get funky. Rinse the grimy filter out cartridge off in fish tank water once you're doing water transformations (in case you rinse it with faucet water, this is going to kill the micro organism).