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My house got flea bombed when I was away!


DevinB

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Hi, well I had a problem at my house due to lack of communications.. I have a few tanks that I was breeding taiwan bees in, and I made the mistake of trusting my family to take care of them while I was out of town for a few days... My mom decided to flea bomb the house while I was away without asking how that may effect inverts, and I wasn't home to saran wrap up all of the tanks and move filter media into a safe spot until the air cleared... So needless to say I came home to a bunch of fish happy to great me in my planted tanks, and the red decaying corpses of LITERALLY all of my taiwan bee shrimps in the rest of the tanks......

 

I'm pretty peeved at the moment, as I have lost in the thousands of dollars worth of shrimps... I didn't have  nearly that much invested into this hobby but still lost multiple hundreds of dollars of actual money and hundreds upon hundreds of hours of time spent on breeding projects.. Never the less, I plan to buy some shrimp and start fresh now that I have more experience. But here is where I need help.. What should i do to my tanks to clean out the poison that ruined my shrimp...? Is it a lost cause to think that I could maybe use a bunch of carbon to absorb out the pollution? I'm assuming whatever  insecticide that bug bombs use is very unfriendly to shrimp, though all of my snails in these tanks are still alive..Should I scrap out my tanks completely...? I'd rather not throw away the 200 dollars of ada soil I have in these tanks if i can safely remove toxins without a full Mulligan...

 

Any help appreciated, though I know I'm probably coming across as an incoherent nutter... Sorry still a bit in shock...

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That's really sucks and I feel for you. Unfortunately I can't really give you any advice on whether the carbon can take out the bug bomb from the soil. I'm sure they is something you could soak it in or use in the filter that would work. Not sure what it would be tho. 

You could try and then add some cheap shrimps to the tanks to test. Would hate to buy a bunch of TBs and kill them. 

 

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Personally, I'd reset!  It's not worth the risk!  

Clean the tanks out with dawn, clean and reuse the sponges, then I'd set everything back up and run carbon anyway to see if you can soak up anything that the plants might have sucked up.  I'm not sure if you could clean anything up out of the soil.  

I know a few folks here (TGOE & ShrimpLife) that I could wholeheartedly recommend for Taiwan Bees.  And there are several more on Facebook that I could recommend to you.  I'm also kind of local to you (I'm pretty low on stock right now) but do have some easy to grow plants, floaters and even some Neo's, CRS and Stardust that might help you to start out again.  I could even offer up a sponge to jumpstart a cycle for you.  

As for soil, I've never used ADA but have had great success with Brightwell, Controsoil and especially Akadama!  None of the aforementioned leech ammonia.  

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Hey I'm sorry to hear that your tanks got flea bombed and you lost everything that really sucks, as for my advice from what I'm reading its better to follow what wyazz said and tear down the tanks, give them a good wash and toss out the substrate. I'm not sure if the active ingredient in flea bombs can bind to the sponge or be absorbed by the plants, but from what I am reading if pyrethins were the active pesticide within the flea bomb it can linger within the substrate for a very long time as it will not break down easily in water without sunlight. Once you finished resetting everything you can start the tank with a few cull shrimp  and see if they do well; if they do go from there. 

 

Heres the link for what I read about pyrethins

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/pyrethrins.pdf

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I'd reset also. If I was Living back in the states instead of Germany. I would hook you up with some TB's for free. Having a loss like that is sad. Especially during a breeding Project. All that time and effort down the drain. It is good to hear that you are still wanting to continue shrimping!! 

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