Urgent Help needed

[Ron Chaffey]

Hi all, my daughter has a tropical fresh water tank with a major proble. When doing a half water change she broke the thermometer .....it is a glss type one with sold little balls in the bottom and red liquid ....questions ... are the liquid and balls poisonous to the fish ...we have removed them to fresh water with ager in it but need help setting up spare tank with totally fresh water .....HELP !!!!!

[wombat1100]

I did this once with no ill effects to my fish, I would be more concerned about moving the fish and stressing them .
how big is the tank, if its a large tank i think you would be OK
do partial water changes of 20% for the next 3 days and then weekly is my thoughts
Dazz

[yarra2]

Happened to me a few months ago and I figured the liquid was alcohol and a definite fish killer. I immediately took the fish out (luckily it happened during cleaning so I had a couple of buckets of water from the tank and the filter was off) and emptied and cleaned the tank entirely. One good thing came out of it.... I'd had a nagging ammonia problem and that was fixed:)

In practical terms, the fish must have got a bit of the alcohol before I could get them out but it didn't seem to affect them.

Mike