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Candy in water -- is it bad?

J

jonathan.

As I've said to a few people here, I work at the Petco in Howell. Well, today was my day off and I was enjoying it along with a few beers at home when I got an emergency phone call from a co-worker.

The fish tank water -- and substrate -- was pink.

Bright, garish pink.

To my great disdain, I traveled the 20 minutes to the job and drained out about half the old water, changed the carbon (which needed it anyway), and re-filled the empty water.

Just wondering if anyone here thinks that this is a devastatingly dangerous event. I can't imagine it'd be too bad, since I diluted what was in there pretty well in the hour I was there working on the tanks.

I couldn't stay any longer and I'm there tomorrow as well (which will obviously be spent on working on the damn tank the whole day), but I'd have to assume the tanks would be fine overnight.

Either way, I can't see how anyone could go and do that to living creatures. Real crappy people we get there sometimes.

I think the candy was Skittles.
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Candy is predominantly sugar. Sugar can either create an algae bloom or kill it, depending on the algae in the tank prior to the sugar dosing event (hence the recommendation to dose vodka when you have a hair algae problem). I'd say I wouldn't worry about the livestock but I'd be inclined to want to get the bulk of the sugar out of the system soon so that it doesn't create a cyano or hair algae outbreak.

Good luck. I hope everything's ok!
 
J

jonathan.

Phyl said:
Candy is predominantly sugar. Sugar can either create an algae bloom or kill it, depending on the algae in the tank prior to the sugar dosing event (hence the recommendation to dose vodka when you have a hair algae problem). I'd say I wouldn't worry about the livestock but I'd be inclined to want to get the bulk of the sugar out of the system soon so that it doesn't create a cyano or hair algae outbreak.

Good luck. I hope everything's ok!
Click to expand...

Got most of it out today. No casualties at all, which is sort of what I expected.

Water still has a hue of pink, though, which leads me to believe that this might've been food coloring rather than candy as after 2 50% water changes in 2 days that there is still quite a bit of color in the water.

Very weird, either way.
 
C

chaoscat

I'm wondering if this was a prank with some food coloring. It would seem like it would take a LOT of candy to significantly affect the water color. More than one little kids lollipop.
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Who carries food coloring around with them though?! That's the strange part, IMO. I can't imagine taking that chance!!
 
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