Dropsy Or Pregnancy

[00Gingerman]

hi everyone
 
before bed last night i checked on her one last time. she was upside-down and breathing very slow. i put my hand in the water under her and held her as she passed. what killed me the most is that after, howl was looking for her
 
thank you again for your help
 
i did manage to go out today and i picked up some 5 in one test strips, i found out my water was generally very hard, off the charts and there is no doubt that is what killed her. its odd because i continued treating the water with API stress coat plus during my water change. it reads
 
NO3: 20
NO2: 0-0.5
PH: 7.0-7.5
KH(carbonate hardness): 120
and general hardness was 180 or higher. somthing could have happened with my water, it being winter and all last water change. ill have to add more water softener to keep my others safe 
 
im sorry i didnt say what i put in my tank earlier. it is API: stress coat, also bio-support from my local fish place, big al's
 
as for now im going to make a new thread about howl, my male. hes becoming anti social and introverted, and im wondering if soon, not to soon, but sometime soon it would be wise to get a female for him
 
thank you again

 

[Ninjouzata]

I'm so sorry for your loss 

 
Test strips aren't quite accurate unfortunately, it's better to get a liquid test kit. I thought I mentioned that but maybe I didn't If not, I'm sorry!
 
I highly doubt the hard water is what killed her. Plenty of people have hard water and no issues with their fish.
What concerns me is that you have nitrite. I wonder if you have ammonia but unfortunately test strips don't test for that.
 
I'd hold off on getting howl a new lady friend until your tank is cycled. Did you get around to reading that article I linked for you?

 

[00Gingerman]

I'm so sorry for your loss 

 
Test strips aren't quite accurate unfortunately, it's better to get a liquid test kit. I thought I mentioned that but maybe I didn't

If not, I'm sorry!
 
I highly doubt the hard water is what killed her. Plenty of people have hard water and no issues with their fish.
What concerns me is that you have nitrite. I wonder if you have ammonia but unfortunately test strips don't test for that.
 
I'd hold off on getting howl a new lady friend until your tank is cycled. Did you get around to reading that article I linked for you?

no i missed it in all the commotion, ill give it a read now. i guess ill have to look for a liquid test next time im out
 
thank you again

 

[Ninjouzata]

You're welcome I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help :c

 

[00Gingerman]

You're welcome I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help :c

no worries. I should have come sooner. and im sorry for replying so late tonight. i wasn't able to pick up anything on the way home sadly
 
so I read up on cycling and feel much more confident, but i have a few more questions. i don't know if i should ask them here but it seems like the place for now
 
so from the test I did I see that i have nitrate, witch is ok, since i have to do the water change i should have done a couple days ago before the drama, but i have nitrite which means the bacteria eating the nitrite in the tank arnt going as strong? it would be nice to know amonia like you said but yea i missed the mark on that one.
 
so using what i know, i think that part of the reason I have nitrite is because my temp was low, I cranked it up to 75 so that should help production of the bacteria. my ph and KH seem good, infact KH seems really high in my tank, meaning after a bit i will have alot of nitrate because the bacteria will flourish in this environment. its funny. i never understood what i was doing till now, but it seems like it was on the right track. i am worried about the amonia, but will the fish and food im giving keep that constant, or should i look to get amonia to add to the water ( im not sure how id feel about that, adding somthing so toxic into the tank with them there)
 
and am i even on the right track with my thinking? again thanks 

 

[Ninjouzata]

Yes. Turning up the heat should help, I think I read that they reproduce more slowly in cold water?
 
No, you don't add ammonia if you have fish in the tank. That is used for a fish less cycle.
The fish in your tank right now produce ammonia, and they always will but eventually there will be bacteria that can convert it to nitrites and then to nitrates to make it safe
 
I am very fuzzy on these things, am still very inexperienced.
I think nitrite does something to the fishes blood that makes them not able to take in oxygen very well, which is why even with proper oxygenation in the tank they'll be at the top gasping.
 
To combat this you can do water changes, which makes the cycle go slower, but makes it safer for your fish. Or you can add sodium chloride. Here are instructions from the same person who wrote that cycling article.
 
To add 10 ppm of chloride for every ppm of nitrite in the water, use the following steps:
1. Multiply your nitrite reading by 10. This will give you the needed mg/l of chloride you need to add.
2. Calculate the actual volume in liters of water in your tank. If your volume is in gallons you must convert this into liters. (As a rule, using the advertised volume of the tank at about 85% will put you in the right ballpark.) 1 gallon = 3.875 liters
3. Multiply the number in #1 above by the number of liters of water in #2 above to get the total number of mg of chloride you will need to add. 
4. Because salt is roughly 2/3 chloride, you must multiply the number calculated in #3 by 1.5. You now know how many mg of salt you should add to the water. Dividing this number by 1,000 will convert this amount to grams which are easier to weigh for most people.
5. Do not add salt directly to the tank. Remove some tank water to a container and mix the salt in that, then add the salt water to the tank spreading it around the surface.

 

[DreamertK]

 
Sodium chloride?? How is this supposed to help at all?? I mean some SMALL amount of salt is good for fish when they're feeling sick, but not to remain in the tank for weeks or to skip a needed WC.
 
WC's will NOT slow down the cycle. They don't remove the bacteria, they remove the dangerous amounts of NH3/NO2. Trust me. I spent two weeks breaking my back and doing 75% WC's and the cycle went just as normally as if there were no fish at all. The bacteria will still have food and multiply until the cycle ends. Well they'll still multiply after the cycle ends, but the population will top off.
 
From the water readings, it doesn't sound like they're still cycling or at the very least at the end of the cycle. An NH3 reading would confirm it though.

 

[Ninjouzata]

It does something to the nitrite. Binds it maybe? I'll have to ask TTA again.
 
From what I've learned they do slow down the cycle, by removing what the bacteria is trying to eat? Again, still learning here. Will ask TTA.
 
What do you mean it doesn't sound like they're still cycling? There should not be any nitrite or ammonia in the tank if it is cycled.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

DreamertK- you need to do some reading on topics before you come out with statements which you can not back up with science because they are not correct.
 
Start by doing a Google search for "chloride and nitrite". The chloride essentially blocks the uptake of nitrite at the gills. Then when you have read this all you may want to return and say oops, I was wrong. Research into the effects of nitrite on fish is considered worthless in the absence of data on chloride.
 

 
4.2.1. Chloride

Since 1977 nitrite toxicity has been known to depend greatly on the salinity of the water in which the nitrite exposure took place (Crawford and Allen, 1977). Mortality in seawater occurred at nitrite concentrations 50 to 100 times higher than in fresh water (Crawford and Allen, 1977). The effect of chloride on the toxicity of nitrite is now known to be so great that experiments in which chloride
concentrations are not documented are of very low value because they cannot be meaningfully compared with the results of other studies.

from http/www.agriculturejournals.cz/publicFiles/61325.pdf
 
And water changes to lower ammonia and nitrite absolutely do slow down the cycle. The bacteria are extremely inefficient users of ammonia and nitrite, it is why they take so long for them to double compared to other bacteria. They only reproduce in response to ammonia or nitrite in excess of beyond maintenance needs. As the size of the colony grows it takes more ammonia to get them to reproduce. To get more of them to reproduce requires enough excess ammonia for more of them. By reducing ammonia levels to very low levels, you effectively slow the rate of reproduction. If they reproduce more slowly, it takes longer for them to build up to any given mass. If you don't understand this, try approaching it this way. Set up three identical tanks. Follow the fishless cycling directions on this site but in one tank dose 1 ppm of ammonia, in the next use 2 ppm as the dose and in the third use 3 ppm. According you you all three tanks would complete the cycle to three different levels in the same time.
 
You are also incorrect in saying your fish in cycle went as a fishless one. Moreover, how do you know what harm may have been done to any of the fish.
 
A properly conducted 1st stage fish in or full fishless cycle should take about 5 weeks on average. The difference is at the end of a fishless cycle you may fully stock a tank. With a fish in cycle you have completed phase one and the tank has nowhere near enough bacteria for a full fish load and completing the stocking will take a few months more normally.
 
I am happy to link you to a great deal of research on these topics if you have trouble finding the information. Try poking around here (it searches the published Scientific literature): http/scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en