I am taking care of my daughter's 5 year old male RES as she is in an apartment she can't have him in. I have zero experience with anything other than birds, cats, and dogs so this has been an experience, to say the least!
Cleaning his 55 gal tank (working on finding him a 100gal) is such a chore for my husband so I bought API Sludge Destroyer to help keep the water clean. We also bought more media for the Sun Sun Hw302 265gph canister filter we use. The Sludge Destroyer came in first so my husband put the initial amount in immediately. BIG mistake! We totally didn't think about the fact that the filter, which desperately needed the media changed, was going to pull the Sludge Destroyer through the filter too! Almost immediately the water became RANK and started to get black. The media is due today so we decided to just wait overnight... ugh. My apartment now smells like I had a sewage backup!
So, word to the wise: Change media (and water) before using Sludge Destroyer!!!
PS - is there anything I should do for the turtle since he was in the nastiness or is he good?