Chomped through thermomiter!!! Help!!!

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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BuBBLes
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Chomped through thermomiter!!! Help!!!

Post by BuBBLes »

Fluffy learnt last night how to chew through big apple snails...
I woke up this morning and he'd chewed through the thermometer!
Ive scoped him out and put him in a little plastic box full of water i had in a barrell left to do a 25% water change!

I know nothing about mercury poisoning!
What happens if hes eaten a little a bit?
Is he going die?
what do i do!!
Please help me!
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Rocker
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Post by Rocker »

There is little you can do if he has eaten any. Just keep a close eye on him. It is very common for puffers to chomp glass thermometers.

Mine chews the heater and the filter intake.
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BuBBLes
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Post by BuBBLes »

So there will be mercury in the water aswell then?
I rang a few places and they said they stoped using mercury in thermometers ages ago...
But i dont know! :cry:
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Post by Hilly »

Doubt there will be any mercury in the thermometer. Hopefully he wont have ingested the glass and just broke it up.
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Post by BuBBLes »

Ill go home tonight and see if i can piece the bits back together to determin wether or not he swallowed some.
Worth a try i guess.
Thanks for both your help!
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Post by Nick »

Aquarium thermometers are not mercury 99.9% of the time. They're an alcohol with a red dye in it. I'd just do two 90% water changes in a row to make sure it's not in there, though it evaporates off quite quickly on it's own, being alcoho.
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