Why Are They Dieing?

[waterdrop]

Hi Sarah,

Unfortunately, as you well know by now, a fish-in cycling situation is a tough situation to be in. While it is good to understand to perform a very large water change such as your 80% one (since excess ammonia and/or nitrite(NO2) is far worse for the fish than other shocks in most cases) it doesn't really "last" to get you through multiple days, as you have seen. Instead, most fish-in cycling situations demand one or more a day. It's kind of like if you had a kid in a bottle and needed to keep refreshing their air on a regular basis so they could breath - you are the manual oxygen pump sort of thing (although of course what you are doing in the case of fish it taking away the excess ammonia (ammonia comes off their gills during their respiration process - it happens very quickly) and the subsequent nitrite produced when ammonia processing bacteria work on it (in a cycle these ammonia processing bacteria (A-Bacs I like to call them) come along much quicker and give you a long phase where they are very good at producing excess nitrite(NO2), which in many ways is even more deadly than ammonia.

Another thing to understand about the loss of the fish is that the effect is cumulative. Even though a test may have seemed to indicate low ammonia (disregarding the ambiguities of testing at the moment) you have to realize that the gill damage from even slightly elevated ammonia keeps building up over time and that even after a change to ammonia free water it would take the fish an even longer time to replace the gill cells and structures that were damaged. Most tropicals are just not good at coming back from ammonia damage, having evolved for eons in the pristine high volume waters of nature prior to us beginning to keep them.

My thoughts go out to you as I know you want to get past your fish-in cycle and I know how incredibly hard it can be to find the time for this stuff during busy family life. I have the same problem!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[orandas]

Its a bit like the bottled biological liquid sold by shops which claim to instantly cycle your filter. ya right.

Dont believe everything thats written on the bottle.

Thats for sure

hehe thats why i tried it once, and no longer

 

[orandas]

~~waterdrop~~

So glad to see you here, and gives me the opportunity to , your replys/explainations to others from earlier threads back to 2008, really help nail my understanding of fishless cycling. Yourself and others.

my fishes and i are grateful.

 

[Nurse_Sarah]

Hi Everyone,

I cant believe the HUGE response I recieved from this!

Ok, i am using the nutrafin test kit...

I did a 90% water change today.. came home and my platy's are fine (except for the one that died obviously)... streaking still exists... neons started looking a bit "clear" to me.. red part on fin was patchy. So i decided to do thw water change.

I am unsure what was causing the false negative tests.. I am using the top fin wtaer conditioner, and using the API aquarium salt.

The ick spot on my one fish has cleared. I forgot to mention I had added the coppersafe to the tank to treat. Cleared everyone up... and laying in bed last night i thought hmm.. wonder if it was copper poisoning... but everyone else seems to be fine.

I will retest once everything gets settled down in there.

Hopefully everyone will live.

--Sarah

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Api test kits works fine (not combined with prime though).

My beef is with prime (yes everyone raves about it), it messes salicyte based test kits up (eg api test kit), and it never protected my fishes, even at 5x - their maximum doseage protection.First and only time that i tried it was during the fish-in cycle - when the fishes really needed the prime to neutralise/convert the free ammonia & nitrite.Nada.

I use the API Master kit WITH prime and it has never steered me wrong. Most people think that since Prime has ammonia and nitrite neutralizing properties that it is going to keep it under the radar from the test kit. This is untrue. Even if the Prime is shielding the fish from the toxic capabilities of ammonia and nitrite, it will still show on the test kit. The kit will detect Ammonium, which is the less toxic form the Prime converts ammonia to. My kit is accurate and my thriving communities can attest to that.

When you think about it, no kit is entirely 100% accurate. Even laboratory grade chemistry analyzers have some sort of standard deviation.

when my api tests came back with a funny shade of 0.5ppm - i thought ok, roughly detoxify against 0.5ppm. When that didn't work cos the fishes look bedraggled, mid-month, i thought lets up the dose, their bottle claim max 5x dose is safe....... i tried that.......guess what nada....fish still look bedraggled.

my fishes never looked like that with a simple water conditioner.

Generally when the ammonia level gets past .25ppm, most would do a water change over dumping chemicals into their aquariums.

 

[orandas]

Api test kits works fine (not combined with prime though).

My beef is with prime (yes everyone raves about it), it messes salicyte based test kits up (eg api test kit), and it never protected my fishes, even at 5x - their maximum doseage protection.First and only time that i tried it was during the fish-in cycle - when the fishes really needed the prime to neutralise/convert the free ammonia & nitrite.Nada.

I use the API Master kit WITH prime and it has never steered me wrong. Most people think that since Prime has ammonia and nitrite neutralizing properties that it is going to keep it under the radar from the test kit. This is untrue. Even if the Prime is shielding the fish from the toxic capabilities of ammonia and nitrite, it will still show on the test kit. The kit will detect Ammonium, which is the less toxic form the Prime converts ammonia to. My kit is accurate and my thriving communities can attest to that.


When you think about it, no kit is entirely 100% accurate. Even laboratory grade chemistry analyzers have some sort of standard deviation.

when my api tests came back with a funny shade of 0.5ppm - i thought ok, roughly detoxify against 0.5ppm. When that didn't work cos the fishes look bedraggled, mid-month, i thought lets up the dose, their bottle claim max 5x dose is safe....... i tried that.......guess what nada....fish still look bedraggled.

my fishes never looked like that with a simple water conditioner.

Generally when the ammonia level gets past .25ppm, most would do a water change over dumping chemicals into their aquariums.

Seachem has already agreed with me via email&phone calls(they called me) that prime and api test kit don't match. So now you've confused me more.

i'm happy with api test kits.

No one can convince me prime works, because my fishes clearly suffered for it,but everyone go ahead and carry on using it.
i was doing 60% x 2(morning and night-its a big tank) = 120% daily water changes

i wud love to continue to use prime(since everyone raves about it), but from my experience its cheaper to buy a simple water conditioner if prime can't neutralize ammonia/nitrite.

No one can convince me prime works, because my fishes clearly suffered for it,but everyone go ahead and carry on using it.

 

[orandas]

Hi Everyone,

I cant believe the HUGE response I recieved from this!

Ok, i am using the nutrafin test kit...

I did a 90% water change today.. came home and my platy's are fine (except for the one that died obviously)... streaking still exists... neons started looking a bit "clear" to me.. red part on fin was patchy. So i decided to do thw water change.

I am unsure what was causing the false negative tests.. I am using the top fin wtaer conditioner, and using the API aquarium salt.

The ick spot on my one fish has cleared. I forgot to mention I had added the coppersafe to the tank to treat. Cleared everyone up... and laying in bed last night i thought hmm.. wonder if it was copper poisoning... but everyone else seems to be fine.

I will retest once everything gets settled down in there.

Hopefully everyone will live.

--Sarah

we adore fishes thats why sarah.

i'm unfamiliar with nutrafin test kit & top fin water conditioner

good job on the big water change - take care of the water and the water will take care of the fishes.

the streaking suggests nitrite issues, but water changes&lots of airation&the salt will help that.

it has to be all ich free to call it safe, but the salt shud help with the ich.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

Prime works great for what i use it for. I have ammonia in my tap water and it neutralizes long enough for my filter to get rid of the ammonia, while also conditioning the water. My test kit shows ammonia when I test right after a water change (after dosing with prime) which is what i expect, even though the prime will have neutralized the ammonia temporarily. Within 12hrs, the ammonia reading with the API test kit is zero. Unfortunetely for me, I cannot dilute the ammonia in my tnak below 1ppm in an ammonia emergency because my tap water is crap lol. But Prime acts as a temporary barrier, which I believe only neutralizes for a short time

 

[orandas]

I believe only neutralizes for a short time

Agreed, i know it suppose to be ineffective after 24hrs ( even seachem say so in their website etc), so i replaced every 24hrs(so much for cost effective if need topping up every 24hrs), along with my manmmoth water chamges, even then could not protect my fishes.

ammonia in tap water, wow thats tough

 

[Nurse_Sarah]

found out what was wrong... pH 5.0!!!! AHHH.

water is testing 0 for nitrite and nitrate, and 0 now for ammonia... after a 80% water change. not sure if i am getting false negatives... im not using anything special to skew results...

 

[HayzH]

is your tap water ph 5.0?

 

[orandas]

found out what was wrong... pH 5.0!!!! AHHH.

good u discovered the cause, bad that its low. so u know u need to raise it right? doseage etc?

 

[KISSfn]

Unfortunetely for me, I cannot dilute the ammonia in my tank below 1ppm in an ammonia emergency because my tap water is crap lol.

Kordon Amquel Plus or Ammo Lock works well in converting ammonia to ammonium in an emergency.

 

[CrazyAirborne]

I believe only neutralizes for a short time

Agreed, i know it suppose to be ineffective after 24hrs ( even seachem say so in their website etc), so i replaced every 24hrs(so much for cost effective if need topping up every 24hrs), along with my manmmoth water chamges, even then could not protect my fishes.

ammonia in tap water, wow thats tough

not to get off track but

if you use prime as a water conditioner (removing chlorine, etc) , it is very cheap. (this is what its MADE for) when you say you were doing all these water changes and then dosing prime all the time (to stop ammonia), no wonder it ran out so fast. you cant really say that it didnt last as long as its advertised, you were using 5x the amount and for the wrong reasons. imo.

i use the recommended amount of 1ml per 10gal and mine WILL last me for 5000 gallons. (500ml bottle = £14.45 ebay)

 

[orandas]

I believe only neutralizes for a short time

Agreed, i know it suppose to be ineffective after 24hrs ( even seachem say so in their website etc), so i replaced every 24hrs(so much for cost effective if need topping up every 24hrs), along with my manmmoth water chamges, even then could not protect my fishes.

ammonia in tap water, wow thats tough

not to get off track but

if you use prime as a water conditioner (removing chlorine, etc) , it is very cheap. (this is what its MADE for) when you say you were doing all these water changes and then dosing prime all the time (to stop ammonia), no wonder it ran out so fast. you cant really say that it didnt last as long as its advertised, you were using 5x the amount and for the wrong reasons. imo.

i use the recommended amount of 1ml per 10gal and mine WILL last me for 5000 gallons. (500ml bottle = £14.45 ebay)

The recommended amount did not neutralise. The maximum amount allowed did not neutralise. Hardly 'fit for the purpose' if it still doesn't neutralise what it says it neutralises.

Mine powder form was to last 250,000gallons, not to mention my liquid bottle was 500ml. In total, hardly cost effective, for a 2 month cycle.

Like i keep saying yous can carry on using it, i'm not.

i've used stress coat for 3yrs and i'm happy with it, but ever on the look out for cost effectiveness, my next try is Sodium Thiosulfate - heard its 'really' cost effective without the marketing.