I Guess I Know Nothing??

It's unsettling when you think you know something, only to find out you don't. Even more so when that something is a fact you've held as common knowledge for years and years.

While cycling my 90 gallon tank a few months ago, I never drained my 55. My 55 previously housed all my inhabitants while my 90 cycled. After everything was switched over to the 90, the 55 just sat--and continues to do so to this day.

Yesterday I shone a flashlight into the 55, and I noticed thousands and thousands of nearly microscopic "bugs" swimming about. They might be pods, I suppose, but unlike pods, they don't seem to like the glass and stay in the water--scurrying hurriedly about.

For about 3 months now the tank has been sitting stagnant. No water movement whatsoever. It's sat so long infact, about 9" of water has evaporated from the tank. About 2 months ago, I poured about a quart of bleach in the tank so it wouldn't start to smell, and so that algal growth wouldn't take over.

I found it very strange that so much bleach would leave anything alive, but I chalked it up to perhaps the chlorine (bleach) has evaporated out of the water.

So yesterday I poured about a half-gallon of fresh bleach into the tank. I was confident that would kill everything and I could begin to drain the tank and clean it up.

Well, you probably know where this is going. Today, the population of these bugs doesn't seem to be affected. When I put my nose to the top of the tank, the smell of bleach is quite strong; yet these bugs survive, seemingly unaffected by the addition of bleach.

I'm at a total loss. I've always held it as common knowledge that bleach is the ultimate weapon against life. I didn't think that anything could make it in bleach water. Some restaurants use a dilute solution of bleach water to clean their cutting boards--approximately a capful per gallon of water.

I know that some bacteria can produce spores, which are very tough to kill, but these lifeforms in the 55 are not bacteria. They're large enough to be seen with the naked eye, which suggests to me they're not single-celled organisms.

I'm very confused. :-/



Moderators, if you can think of a more appropriate forum for this post, feel free to move it.

 

Maybe the bleach is sitting on the bottom or top of the tank instead of being mixed in all of it?

 

thats cool i would probably save some in a small tank to observe them before cleaning out the tank.

you should sell them and call them supepods(r intentionally left out)


edit: soon they will reach the ocean and take over like the aquarium bred caluerpa

 

OK. I guess I spoke too soon. Today everything is dead. That's more like it. I suppose the bleach needed some time.

Sorry for the confusion, everyone.

 

good that it is dead. you might have had some super bug on your hands.

 

Super bug nothing! I might have had the Holy Grail!

 

Those bugs held the cure for cancer...

 

In the famous words of Hannibal Lechter, "Not anymore."

 

lol...