Broken Mercury Thermometer

[uwish]

Overnight my thermometer broke and was floating around the tank. Of course my fear now is the beads of mercury that are "somewhere" inside the tank. I vacuumed as much of the gravel as I could but since mercury is heavy it won't be removed by the vacuuming process.

I have some obvious concerns. 1 fish health and 2 general environmental health of the substrate.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Edited November 27, 2011 by uwish

[Ted]

Unless the thermometer was silver, it is tinted alcohol, not mercury. It wouldn't hurt to do a vacuum of the substrate to pick up any of the little metal bb's used to weight the thermometer. I have had the same thing happen and no causalties among my livestock.

[DragonNeko]

Maybe try sifting through the sand with a small shovel. Something like a cat litter scoop, but smaller. I think the little scoops for Hermit Crabs might be small enough to get the little balls.

[jvision]

If you have a magnet, it should pull all the BBs out

[Jayba]

First off where physically did it break on the thermometer, did the little bubble break? Is the material red or was it silver?

If it was red, like Ted said it's just alcohol, clean up the bits, water change and you will be good.

If it was mercury, I would replace the substrate more than likely. Good luck.

[Iceturf]

if it was mercury you may consider carefully draining the entire tank, storing all the water. And taking everything that was in contact to the mercury down to the enviro centre :\

[werner]

Is the tank planted? Many plants will take up the mercury and store it in their tissues. It's one of the techniques used to remove toxic heavy metal concentrations in polluted or industrial waste water.