caffeine thought of the day... air quality???

[Magnum Man]

thoughts on air quality and it's effect on fish... air quality has been in the news a lot lately... made me question it's effect on fish... they still breath it, in my case, it's pumped into the tanks, in copious amounts, via a large air pump... being the pump is in an air conditioned house, it probably has less forest fire smoke, than outside tanks would have, however all the plastics, insulation, and aromatics in a house, often the air isn't that good for us, then there are molds or mildew, depending on where the air pump got hidden, and lots of undesirable compounds, like even "air fresheners" that could be finding their way, into our tank water... I have a large HEPA filter I'll be bringing into our basement, as an attempt to improve the air in our old farm house basement ( for us ) wondering if the fish will notice a difference in a month or two???

thoughts???

 

[GaryE]

Air fresheners and cleansers have been blamed for a lot of fish deaths, and it's certain that for surface air breathers like Anabantoids, smoke in the air isn't great (it isn't for us, either).
You tend to get a film on the water with really bad air. That you have to watch for and remove.

 

[Rusty_Shackleford]

How does smoke from a wild.fire differ from burning off acre after acre of rainforest?
Not to mention what unregulated chemicals are being dumped into water ways in the 3rd world countries our fish come from.
I think the fish in our tanks have it pretty good.

 

[GaryE]

How does smoke from a wild.fire differ from burning off acre after acre of rainforest?

Smoke on the water, and fire in the sky drive extinction. So the Amazon version is also harmful - they don't cancel each other out. I doubt you get as many water films outdoors as indoors, with our low turnover water. Tanks don't flow well. But the extinctions are caused by heated water in most cases, once the shade from trees is gone.
I'd wager the dumping of chemicals in places like North America, with high population densities are a bigger problem for fish than in many other regions. In lightly populated Gabon, we found industrial farming was a culprit, with large plantations killing some streams with pesticides. Our gold rush is largely over, but gathering gold is a huge killer in jungle streams.
Most people there were still drinking water from the clean streams (they warned us away for the polluted ones).
But smoke, air fresheners, etc do harm fish in tanks. You can be careful with the latter, but if a forest is burning in your region, captive fish have to "cough along" with the fishkeepers.