Admittedly, the previous keeper in the aquarium did not take care of the tanks: there's hair algae in every single crevice, all the coralline algae is gone in the SW tanks, he didn't do water changes wit gravel vaccing, so only removed the water, he killed all the live plants, didn't have enough rocks in the Lake Tang exhibit....took the arrowana off display and put him in a tank of Meth Blue to "fix" whatever was sick with him...killed the freshwater female stingray, the female river turtle....but keep in mind, this was over several months.
Within three weeks, I've managed to do some small good. The male river turtle seems to be happy; he's active and moving around, and getting water changes quite a bit because, well, let's face it, turtles are messy. The eel and the bamboo shark are active too, since they're on a regular feeding schedule now, and the bichir doesn't have his white ring around his upper jaw anymore. I moved 5 percula clowns and some other saltwater fish from one tank, draining and breaking it down, to a reef tank with no problems.
On the other hand, I didn't replace the air stones, after a water change, in the 150 gallon tank with silver dollars, a pleco, and lima shovelnoses, and when I came in the next morning, only the pleco, one silvar dollar, and one lima survived. I added decorations (fake plants, rocks, etc) to the tanks to give fishes places to hide, and the rock I placed in with the male stingray, he apparently brushed up against, caught fungus despite daily water changes, and within four days, he was dead too. I water changed and gravel vacced the lungfish, and I don't know when he was done last, but perhaps I did too large a change and cleaning and "shocked" him...because he died this morning. So in three weeks, I've done a lot of damage with all the best intentions.
My dream job is not turning into a nightmare, but losing it would be.
UPDATE: things are going good again at my job; the upper people on the chain know I'm not knocking off the fish intentionally! As well, what killed the lungfish may have been what kills many people...a scorpion. Necropsy will show for sure.
But overall, things are looking up.
