Boxerwing
- #1
... or how sometimes water changes don't alleviate the problem, but are the problem and can cause Gas Bubble Disease in fish.
Mods: I debated putting this in the Water forum, but decided due to the fish illness component decided to put it here. Please move if you think it would be more appropriate elsewhere.
tl;dr I killed all my fish with water changes due to being unaware of excessive dissolved gases in my water.
This is going to be a very long post, so I hope you have a coffee ready!
I am a very new aquarium owner. Early in the summer, after many years of thinking fish-keeping was too difficult (nitrogen cycle sounds complicated!) I did some reading and decided to finally get a fish tank. Reading that bigger is better, and filtration is good, I got a 77g tank. While the tank was cycling, I spent a lot of time reading about aquariums and fish issues like water quality, fish disease (anchor worms, ew!), stocking and compatibility, etc. It took 2 long months, and a bunch of newbie mistakes, but I finally got the tank cycled fishlessly at the end of August. I changed the water in the tank about 7 or 8 hours before going out to get fish. My husband Scott and I went out to get the fish I wanted: a variety of tetras. We got: Congos, Colombians, Diamonds, Black Phantoms, and two stray Bloodfins. We drip acclimatized them and the first week was amazing! The Congos had carved out their territory, the Colombians and Diamonds were schooling together, the Black Phantoms were starting to explore and the Bloodfins were active and fun to watch. Here are some pics of that tank and fish set up:
Diamond Tetras:
_MG_6816 by DancingWisp, on Flickr
Water parameters the first week were fine: pH=8.2, amm=tr (which I thought was fine due to Nessler style test and being mistaken about the connection between pH and ammonia/um), trites=0, trates increasing over the week to ~20. So a Friday night, Scott and I got the things we needed together, and away we went. Emptying and refilling the tank was no problem due to having the foresight to buy a python. After waiting the requisite 20-30 min to let our heater get used to the temperature, we turned everything back on. As soon as the water started moving around, a fish started swimming weirdly. It spun to the top of the tank and died. And then another. Oh no, forgot to add Prime, and double dosed. Now, we are on well water and have no chlorine/chloramines in our water, but it was the first thought that popped in my head. Got some water out of the tank to test again, while Scott watched the fish. A few more were getting sick quickly, and dying. Ammonia was 0.6, remaining parameters fine. Looking around the tank, I noticed a partially eaten fish that had not been there before. Getting some feedback from another forum, it was decided that either the dead fish got dislodged while cleaning and spiked the amm and/or I wasn't vacuuming the substrate properly and only stirred up mulm instead of removing it which also may have spiked the amm. Noob mistake. That Friday night I ended up losing 8 out of 38 fish. The remaining fish were quiet, and breathing quickly (not at surface), but none others seem to be at death's door.
I felt awful. I dreamed of dead and sick fish all night. Finally, I got up at 5:30 and had a coffee, and did another water test. Amm=0.6, so I knew I had to do another water change to bring it down. Did the water change and remembered the prime this time. However, I didn't even turn anything on before fish started spinning again. Oh no! Fish started dying left and right and I felt absolutely helpless. There was no way to replace the water with bottled; we live about 45km from the nearest town, and besides Scott had the truck in the shop. After three hours, only one Diamond was left alive, and he was struggling. I was devastated. I looked in the bowl where I had been collecting the bodies. The fish looked absolutely normal, except for the whole "dead" part. No signs of injury or illness, just dead.
I was stunned with horror. Water changes are supposed to help, not hurt. All of the tank accessories I left off, as I didn't see the point with the tank only having one struggling tetra in it. I wanted to end the poor Diamond's suffering, but was unable to catch him on my own. I was going to wait until Scott got home for some help in catching him. At this point, with all our difficulties in cycling and now this, I was on the verge of just shutting the tank down and trying again in a few months.
While the fish were struggling, I tried to observe them for any signs of, well, anything. I did notice what looked like air in their fins, and at the time, I couldn't really process it. I thought about it off and on. I vaguely started noticing at the same time, that the lonely Diamond wasn't getting worse and seemed to be holding his own. Talking it over with Scott, we decided that if he was going to fight to live, we would do anything in our power to help him survive. My thoughts shifted from shutting down the tank, to moving the Diamond we now were calling Les (after Les Stroud, Canadian tv show host of "Survivorman") into our 10g.
We did move Les into the smaller tank, and kept the larger tank in cycle by using ammonia. While I was still stunned, Scott took the reins of figuring out what to do. We discussed at length the potential probabilities of different things. Both he and I decided that the problem was due to excessive dissolved gases causing what in humans I would term "air emboli" getting into the fishes' circulatory systems and killing them. Even poor Les had air in his fins. I did some reading, and the term in fish is Gas Bubble Disease.
We figured that the reason the fish didn't get ill when we brought them home was that I changed the water in the tank early enough in the day that the filters and air stones had time to degas the water. We have only been living in this house for four years, and while we noticed air in the pipes, we never thought anymore of it. We are originally from a large city, and our present house is in the country. We just kind of thought it was a normal thing, having never had to use well water before. We did talk to the Public Health Nurse and the Public Health Inspector, and unfortunately they won't test for dissolved gases or ammonia unless there is human illness.
Scott figured a way to mature and degas the water prior to water changes. We now have a 52g rain barrel in a spare bedroom which has an air stone in it. So far so good, as we changed Les' tank water with no problems. It was a very hard (and unfortunately expensive) lesson to learn, but I hope in that reading my story, it will stick in the back of someone's mind and will help them in the future.
Postscript
Les did fine in the 10 gallon until one day the temp in the tank increased by 1.5C. This made him much more active. Shortly afterwards, he started not eating, hiding and breathing heavily. He unfortunately passed away about 10 days later. We figured him being more active was just too much for his already damaged insides and it just pushed him over the edge. However, we did buy some more Diamonds just prior, and he was able to spend a couple of days in the 77g with a group of his own kind. RIP Les, you were the fish that kept my hope about fish-keeping alive. We have done a number of %50+ water changes on our 77g tank, all with good results. In the end, I think we have solved our dissolved gases issues, and hopefully no other fish will ever suffer like those first 38 did.
Re: our ammonia. Using a Nessler style testing kit, we always had amm=tr. While all this went on, we got a salicylate (sp?) test for ammonia. We always got amm< or = 0.25 no matter what. We got amm in the cycled 77 g tank. We got amm in our tap water. We got amm in our RO water. Our empty cycled tank no matter how little or how much liquid ammonia I added, it always went down to amm<0.25. The best we figure is that some contaminant in our water is making amm show a false positive, as trites always are 0 and trates always increase proportionally to amount of ammonia going in. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I am always open to hearing what you have to say, as long as it isn't "well your tank is not cycled because you have ammonia" .
Mods: I debated putting this in the Water forum, but decided due to the fish illness component decided to put it here. Please move if you think it would be more appropriate elsewhere.
tl;dr I killed all my fish with water changes due to being unaware of excessive dissolved gases in my water.
This is going to be a very long post, so I hope you have a coffee ready!
I am a very new aquarium owner. Early in the summer, after many years of thinking fish-keeping was too difficult (nitrogen cycle sounds complicated!) I did some reading and decided to finally get a fish tank. Reading that bigger is better, and filtration is good, I got a 77g tank. While the tank was cycling, I spent a lot of time reading about aquariums and fish issues like water quality, fish disease (anchor worms, ew!), stocking and compatibility, etc. It took 2 long months, and a bunch of newbie mistakes, but I finally got the tank cycled fishlessly at the end of August. I changed the water in the tank about 7 or 8 hours before going out to get fish. My husband Scott and I went out to get the fish I wanted: a variety of tetras. We got: Congos, Colombians, Diamonds, Black Phantoms, and two stray Bloodfins. We drip acclimatized them and the first week was amazing! The Congos had carved out their territory, the Colombians and Diamonds were schooling together, the Black Phantoms were starting to explore and the Bloodfins were active and fun to watch. Here are some pics of that tank and fish set up:
Diamond Tetras:
_MG_6816 by DancingWisp, on Flickr
Water parameters the first week were fine: pH=8.2, amm=tr (which I thought was fine due to Nessler style test and being mistaken about the connection between pH and ammonia/um), trites=0, trates increasing over the week to ~20. So a Friday night, Scott and I got the things we needed together, and away we went. Emptying and refilling the tank was no problem due to having the foresight to buy a python. After waiting the requisite 20-30 min to let our heater get used to the temperature, we turned everything back on. As soon as the water started moving around, a fish started swimming weirdly. It spun to the top of the tank and died. And then another. Oh no, forgot to add Prime, and double dosed. Now, we are on well water and have no chlorine/chloramines in our water, but it was the first thought that popped in my head. Got some water out of the tank to test again, while Scott watched the fish. A few more were getting sick quickly, and dying. Ammonia was 0.6, remaining parameters fine. Looking around the tank, I noticed a partially eaten fish that had not been there before. Getting some feedback from another forum, it was decided that either the dead fish got dislodged while cleaning and spiked the amm and/or I wasn't vacuuming the substrate properly and only stirred up mulm instead of removing it which also may have spiked the amm. Noob mistake. That Friday night I ended up losing 8 out of 38 fish. The remaining fish were quiet, and breathing quickly (not at surface), but none others seem to be at death's door.
I felt awful. I dreamed of dead and sick fish all night. Finally, I got up at 5:30 and had a coffee, and did another water test. Amm=0.6, so I knew I had to do another water change to bring it down. Did the water change and remembered the prime this time. However, I didn't even turn anything on before fish started spinning again. Oh no! Fish started dying left and right and I felt absolutely helpless. There was no way to replace the water with bottled; we live about 45km from the nearest town, and besides Scott had the truck in the shop. After three hours, only one Diamond was left alive, and he was struggling. I was devastated. I looked in the bowl where I had been collecting the bodies. The fish looked absolutely normal, except for the whole "dead" part. No signs of injury or illness, just dead.
I was stunned with horror. Water changes are supposed to help, not hurt. All of the tank accessories I left off, as I didn't see the point with the tank only having one struggling tetra in it. I wanted to end the poor Diamond's suffering, but was unable to catch him on my own. I was going to wait until Scott got home for some help in catching him. At this point, with all our difficulties in cycling and now this, I was on the verge of just shutting the tank down and trying again in a few months.
While the fish were struggling, I tried to observe them for any signs of, well, anything. I did notice what looked like air in their fins, and at the time, I couldn't really process it. I thought about it off and on. I vaguely started noticing at the same time, that the lonely Diamond wasn't getting worse and seemed to be holding his own. Talking it over with Scott, we decided that if he was going to fight to live, we would do anything in our power to help him survive. My thoughts shifted from shutting down the tank, to moving the Diamond we now were calling Les (after Les Stroud, Canadian tv show host of "Survivorman") into our 10g.
We did move Les into the smaller tank, and kept the larger tank in cycle by using ammonia. While I was still stunned, Scott took the reins of figuring out what to do. We discussed at length the potential probabilities of different things. Both he and I decided that the problem was due to excessive dissolved gases causing what in humans I would term "air emboli" getting into the fishes' circulatory systems and killing them. Even poor Les had air in his fins. I did some reading, and the term in fish is Gas Bubble Disease.
We figured that the reason the fish didn't get ill when we brought them home was that I changed the water in the tank early enough in the day that the filters and air stones had time to degas the water. We have only been living in this house for four years, and while we noticed air in the pipes, we never thought anymore of it. We are originally from a large city, and our present house is in the country. We just kind of thought it was a normal thing, having never had to use well water before. We did talk to the Public Health Nurse and the Public Health Inspector, and unfortunately they won't test for dissolved gases or ammonia unless there is human illness.
Scott figured a way to mature and degas the water prior to water changes. We now have a 52g rain barrel in a spare bedroom which has an air stone in it. So far so good, as we changed Les' tank water with no problems. It was a very hard (and unfortunately expensive) lesson to learn, but I hope in that reading my story, it will stick in the back of someone's mind and will help them in the future.
Postscript
Les did fine in the 10 gallon until one day the temp in the tank increased by 1.5C. This made him much more active. Shortly afterwards, he started not eating, hiding and breathing heavily. He unfortunately passed away about 10 days later. We figured him being more active was just too much for his already damaged insides and it just pushed him over the edge. However, we did buy some more Diamonds just prior, and he was able to spend a couple of days in the 77g with a group of his own kind. RIP Les, you were the fish that kept my hope about fish-keeping alive. We have done a number of %50+ water changes on our 77g tank, all with good results. In the end, I think we have solved our dissolved gases issues, and hopefully no other fish will ever suffer like those first 38 did.
Re: our ammonia. Using a Nessler style testing kit, we always had amm=tr. While all this went on, we got a salicylate (sp?) test for ammonia. We always got amm< or = 0.25 no matter what. We got amm in the cycled 77 g tank. We got amm in our tap water. We got amm in our RO water. Our empty cycled tank no matter how little or how much liquid ammonia I added, it always went down to amm<0.25. The best we figure is that some contaminant in our water is making amm show a false positive, as trites always are 0 and trates always increase proportionally to amount of ammonia going in. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I am always open to hearing what you have to say, as long as it isn't "well your tank is not cycled because you have ammonia" .