Help please!(fish live)

Question
Hey!  im 14 years old, and i have TONS of fish questions. i have a 75 gallon tank, and i have one single oscar in it. about liek...idk...3 weeks ago, i had discovered little green moving parasites on the gravel. so like i bought a generel cure for it, and i used this for two treatments, and it killed half of the poppulation, but they just keep fricken multiplyin! i have been doing daily water changes just to keep the population under control. i had enough. i wanna get rid of this major damn infestation as soon as possible, for the skae of my 8 month old albino oscar. any suggestions???? i was thinking of doing somthing very much, risky. draining the whole tank, and cleaning with a 1/10 bleach soulution, but if so, how???the steps????how do you get rid of teh bleach afterwards???? and any other advice? i need the quickest possible cures please.

- thanks much man.
andrew

Answer
Hello Andrew:  first of all...congrats on the Oscar... they rock!... now... calm down... and do not use bleach... else your Oscar will be belly up and not much fun... have the green bugs bothered the Oscar??? What makes you think they are parasites?  What I would do if I where you would be to take out all of the the tank decorations and wash them, take out all of the live plants if you have any and soak them in a bucket with your general cure...along with your tank decorations.  Then I would get a gravel vacuum ... they are about $14 bucks at the aquarium.., and I would gravel vacuum the entire tank... until I had taken out about 40% of the water... repeat this step as needed...Try not to stress out your Oscar....  Now im going to be a bit direct in my next suggestions.  Make sure when you add water to the tank that the new water is close in temperature to the water that is in the tank (very important.)  Make sure that you give another dose of general cure after you are done vacuuming.  NOW wait a few days and if you do not see any more of the green bugs... then do a ten percent water change while gravel vacuuming and when you replace the water add some kind of product like CYCLE to your tank when you are done...  This will bring up the levels of good bacteria in  your tank.... Lastly... after the three days have passed and before you add anything to your tank .... change the filter elements.  I hope this helps you... Dave


Well Andrew... you can try to take the gravel out and clean it manually... otherwise you are just going toh have to gravel vacuum a lot... if this were my tank I would get a 5 gallon bucket and take the gravel out and clean it in super hot water and a high dose of aquarium salt, rinse it out again really good and put it back... if the gravel vacuum isnt working... then thats really your only choice... dave