It is with heavy heart and much confusion that I report that the over the course of this previous weekend we experienced 100% mortality in the Corcoran Grant-funded native fish aquarium. I am at a total loss as to what happened. Maybe you all have some ideas.
Some background- its 40 gallon tank with an Eclipse hood/filter and small powerhead, pea gravel substrate, and two large pieces of resin driftwood for decoration. No plants. Three dimensional silicon "faux rock" background.
I started conditioning the tank in early October with a couple of yellow fin shiners. On October 26 the tank was stocked with locally collected fish. The total fish population was:
2 stonerollers
3 turquoise darters
3 yellowfin shiners
2 Ocmulgee shiners
1 rosy face chub
Temperature stays around the mid-70s.
I've been having some problems with ammonia over the last few weeks and have been testing the water daily. Ammonia levels were hovering around 0.25ppm. I've been doing 25-50% water changes at least weekly. In the last 2 weeks I've been using Stress-Zyme hoping to encourage the biological filtration. On Friday I did a 25% water change and also dosed the tank with Amo-Lock in an attempt to suppress the ammonia since I was not going to be back in the office until today.
The fish appeared healthy and not at all stressed when I left on Friday afternoon. The yellow fins were even doing their breeding behavior for the first time since I've had them. Monday morning I got a call that all of the fish were not only dead, but in a rather advanced state of decomposition on Monday morning. The office was unoccupied all weekend to the best of my knowledge.
I want to collect some more fish and start over, but would like to have some idea as to what went wrong so as not to repeat this unfortunate occurrence.
Any ideas?
Catastrophe with Corcoran Grant aquarium
Started by
Guest_JMoore_*
, Dec 09 2009 01:38 PM
28 replies to this topic
#2
Guest_hmt321_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 02:36 PM
the tank was not cycled
.25 ppm of ammonia indicated that the bio-filter was not fully established
when you added the amo-lock it further starved the bio-filter causing it to crash, one fish died further fouling the water and it spiraled down from there.
it did seem to happen rather fast though
I recommend starting over with a fish-less cycle
.25 ppm of ammonia indicated that the bio-filter was not fully established
when you added the amo-lock it further starved the bio-filter causing it to crash, one fish died further fouling the water and it spiraled down from there.
it did seem to happen rather fast though
I recommend starting over with a fish-less cycle
#3
Guest_JMoore_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 02:50 PM
the tank was not cycled
.25 ppm of ammonia indicated that the bio-filter was not fully established
when you added the amo-lock it further starved the bio-filter causing it to crash, one fish died further fouling the water and it spiraled down from there.
it did seem to happen rather fast though
I recommend starting over with a fish-less cycle
Thanks. That sounds reasonable. Adding the amo-lock was the only thing that I did differently.
I'm just shocked by how quickly it happened. I'll do as you suggest and start over with a fishless cycle. Any recommendations on how to get that going as quickly as possible?
#4
Guest_centrarchid_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 03:15 PM
NH3-N of 0.25 mg / L in my experince is not desirable but should in itself not have caused such a rapid die off. Test your ammo-lock to see if has degraded into something toxic. I have killed sunfish with ammo-lock that may have been stored improperly. Looked like chemical burns.
Swap biofilter media with a cycled tank. Put colonized filter media into your filter. Be carefull to keep it moist, out of bright light away from temperature extremes.
Swap biofilter media with a cycled tank. Put colonized filter media into your filter. Be carefull to keep it moist, out of bright light away from temperature extremes.
#5
Guest_JMoore_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 03:29 PM
Test your ammo-lock to see if has degraded into something toxic.
How would I go about doing that? The fish were dumped before I got back from my trip, but my co-worker described that the fish had started to "come apart" by Monday morning.
#6
Guest_centrarchid_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 04:03 PM
How would I go about doing that? The fish were dumped before I got back from my trip, but my co-worker described that the fish had started to "come apart" by Monday morning.
Get some cheap fish, place in an aerated bucket of water, then add appropriate amount of ammo-lock from your container. If ammo-lock problem, then mortalities should be rapid. If not toxic, then some varaible not considered is problem.
#7
Guest_hmt321_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 04:08 PM
How to do a fish-less cycle (brought to you by - its a slow day at work)
1.) get some ammonia, it is often sold at hardware stores, you want straight ammonia with out surfactants (soap) shake up the bottle, if it foams it has surfactants, the only 2 ingredients should be water and ammonia
2.) compute your dose, it will depend on the concentration of the ammonia, I would add a ml at a time and test with a liquid test kit until you get to 4ppm.
3.) test ammonia stage, test every other day or so until you see the ammonia start to drop, maintain 4ppm ammonia daily
4.) test ammonia and nitrite stage, nitrite will continue to build way up, make sure you maintain the 4- ammonia daily
5.) nitrate stage, nitrite will start to test off the chart, and you will get a very small nitrate reading, I always do a large water change at this point (some people will do a weekly water change just like they will do for typical tank maintenance) maintain 4ppm for ammonia.
6.) keep this up for several weeks (4-6 weeks is normal) eventually you will get to the point where you can add 4ppm of ammonia and it will cycle threw in 24 hours, so no ammonia, or nitrite, but you will have nitrate.
seeding your filter media will drastically speed things up
getting substrate from a river, lake, creek or stream will also speed things up
1.) get some ammonia, it is often sold at hardware stores, you want straight ammonia with out surfactants (soap) shake up the bottle, if it foams it has surfactants, the only 2 ingredients should be water and ammonia
2.) compute your dose, it will depend on the concentration of the ammonia, I would add a ml at a time and test with a liquid test kit until you get to 4ppm.
3.) test ammonia stage, test every other day or so until you see the ammonia start to drop, maintain 4ppm ammonia daily
4.) test ammonia and nitrite stage, nitrite will continue to build way up, make sure you maintain the 4- ammonia daily
5.) nitrate stage, nitrite will start to test off the chart, and you will get a very small nitrate reading, I always do a large water change at this point (some people will do a weekly water change just like they will do for typical tank maintenance) maintain 4ppm for ammonia.
6.) keep this up for several weeks (4-6 weeks is normal) eventually you will get to the point where you can add 4ppm of ammonia and it will cycle threw in 24 hours, so no ammonia, or nitrite, but you will have nitrate.
seeding your filter media will drastically speed things up
getting substrate from a river, lake, creek or stream will also speed things up
#8
Guest_JMoore_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 04:27 PM
That's what I'll do then. Slow and steady will be the motto for this next go around.
#9
Guest_centrarchid_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 04:38 PM
That's what I'll do then. Slow and steady will be the motto for this next go around.
JMoore,
What I described is seeding. Seeding as I describe it should be able to carry light stocking load and ammonia derived from chloramines of your water supply, assuming feeding is not excessive. Stocking density you indicated for your first run was light. Water changes alone should have kept ammonia concentrations within exceptable levels for fish not otherwise stressed.
Will you test toxicity of your ammo-lock or will you make assumption failure of bio-filtration caused loss?
#10
Guest_JMoore_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 04:49 PM
Will you test toxicity of your ammo-lock or will you make assumption failure of bio-filtration caused loss?
I see no reason not to do both.
For what its worth, our local water supplier doesn't use chloramines; I don't know if that's relevant or not. I've never had a problem getting a tank to cycle before. In previous native tanks I've set up I have used a lot more native substrate than I did in this instance.
#11
Guest_centrarchid_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 05:24 PM
Another possibility.
Many years back, some of the decorations were made of materials that leached toxins, especially with extreme pH values. Chemicals we use for water quality manipulation may also play a role. This may be an ongoing risks with some recently manufactured decorations. We recently killed sunfishes, repeatedly, using the same new dog watering bowls as nest. That situation involved leaching of chemicals used in their manufacture which should have been allowed to volatilize before placed in with fish. Latter not likely your problem.
Many years back, some of the decorations were made of materials that leached toxins, especially with extreme pH values. Chemicals we use for water quality manipulation may also play a role. This may be an ongoing risks with some recently manufactured decorations. We recently killed sunfishes, repeatedly, using the same new dog watering bowls as nest. That situation involved leaching of chemicals used in their manufacture which should have been allowed to volatilize before placed in with fish. Latter not likely your problem.
#12
Guest_gzeiger_*
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Posted 09 December 2009 - 06:50 PM
Ongoing presence of ammonia suggests to me that a nitrite spike may be to blame. Conversion of a nonlethal ammonia concentration may produce a lethal concentration of nitrite. Were you testing for that?
#13
Guest_JMoore_*
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Posted 10 December 2009 - 07:42 AM
I was testing nitrite as well. Prior to this weekend my nitrite levels were essentially zero. Which I take to mean that the biological filtering wasn't doing its thing.Ongoing presence of ammonia suggests to me that a nitrite spike may be to blame. Conversion of a nonlethal ammonia concentration may produce a lethal concentration of nitrite. Were you testing for that?
#14
Guest_AussiePeter_*
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Posted 10 December 2009 - 11:00 AM
I don't know what you guys are doing, but cycling freshwater tanks is a goofy thing to do in my opinion. I will quickly qualify that statement by saying you should always seed a filter in a new tank setup from an established healthy tank. But in keeping fishes for almost 30 years I have NEVER EVER cycled a tank (often with not seeding a filter) and have never had a problem. Sometimes with fish at high densities, sometimes with high feeding too. I think the whole tank cycling thing is just something for people who take things to extremes which are usually unnecessary. I also think the industry encourages this so that people buy test kits for all this stuff. It's like buying activated carbon, a complete waste of money! Sure, you can use your test kit to monitor a new tank and watch what ammonia, nitrite and nitrate do over time, but I just think you are wasting time and money.
I realize this does not help you any with why the fish died. I presume students don't have access to drop anything into the aquarium? Did you check your pH? That would be the first thing I would do.
Cheers
Peter
I realize this does not help you any with why the fish died. I presume students don't have access to drop anything into the aquarium? Did you check your pH? That would be the first thing I would do.
Cheers
Peter
#15
Guest_nativeplanter_*
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Posted 10 December 2009 - 01:15 PM
If you have been using Ammo-Lock routinely, that would explain your high ammonia readings. Most test kits can not tell the difference between NH3 and NH4+. Ammo-Lock will change the ammonia (NH3) to less toxic ammonium (NH4+). Your test kit will read it all as ammonia.
Is it possible that one of the kids is dumping things in the tank? Unfortunately, kids at schools can be known to do that. I remember when I was in high school, one teacher had goldfish and a kid kept dumping things in. Things like bleach. They put a lock on the tank.
Is it possible that one of the kids is dumping things in the tank? Unfortunately, kids at schools can be known to do that. I remember when I was in high school, one teacher had goldfish and a kid kept dumping things in. Things like bleach. They put a lock on the tank.
#16
Guest_JMoore_*
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Posted 11 December 2009 - 12:11 PM
If you have been using Ammo-Lock routinely, that would explain your high ammonia readings. Most test kits can not tell the difference between NH3 and NH4+. Ammo-Lock will change the ammonia (NH3) to less toxic ammonium (NH4+). Your test kit will read it all as ammonia.
Is it possible that one of the kids is dumping things in the tank? Unfortunately, kids at schools can be known to do that. I remember when I was in high school, one teacher had goldfish and a kid kept dumping things in. Things like bleach. They put a lock on the tank.
The tank was still in my office at the time, so no one, short of the cleaning guy, would've had access to the building.
I've drained the tank, and am using this as an opportunity to start again from scratch. Thanks for the suggestions.
#17
Guest_UncleWillie_*
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Posted 11 December 2009 - 02:57 PM
It's funny that you say that. Whenever I hear of overnight (or over-weekend) tank die-off, I automatically think of some sort of cleaning chemical getting into the water. When something as fast as that occurs, it is good to try and remember of there was any chance of something like that happening. I hate that this happened to your tank, and I wish you well with a speedy recovery.The tank was still in my office at the time, so no one, short of the cleaning guy, would've had access to the building.
#18
Guest_jim graham_*
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Posted 11 December 2009 - 03:03 PM
Back in the day when a lot of aquarium clubs still held fish shows it was always in the show rules no aerosol or spray cleaners.
#19
Guest_nativeplanter_*
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Posted 11 December 2009 - 03:19 PM
It's funny that you say that. Whenever I hear of overnight (or over-weekend) tank die-off, I automatically think of some sort of cleaning chemical getting into the water. When something as fast as that occurs, it is good to try and remember of there was any chance of something like that happening. I hate that this happened to your tank, and I wish you well with a speedy recovery.
Yeah, I was just thinking that something doesn't sound quite right with your situation. Let me see if I have these facts straight:
1) The tank was set up in early October and had at least a few fish in it since then
2) You used a little native substrate.
My thinking is that this tank really ought to have cycled by now, especially since you introduced bacteria via the substrate. I'm really suspicious that something other than ammonia is causing your problem. Something via the cleaning guy, while it sounds unlikely, seems more likely to me than ammonia. Or it could be something that we aren't yet thinking of.
Could the power have gone out over the weekend? Is it possible that you forgot dechlorinator/dechloraminator and you left the office right after the water change? I'm thinking that something caused mass distress. My guess is that one fish dying didn't cause the whole cascade, because shiners are so good at cannibalizing each other.
A puzzle, this is.
#20
Michael Wolfe
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Posted 11 December 2009 - 07:29 PM
I've drained the tank, and am using this as an opportunity to start again from scratch.
Let me know when you get it ready again and I can be available to help...
I know I am not really adding much to the conversation at this point... but isn't this the tank that you had the yellow shiners in before we even went collecting? I think that your tank was cycled... I think something either got in your tank or something happened to the oxygen levels in the tank... maybe something got sprayed in the room that then formed a film on the surface of the water??? Happened to me once...
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin
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