Yesterday I took out the anacharis from my tank and dosed with Seachem Excel to try and rid my tank of BBA. Today I wake up and see the tank looking like milk so I test ammonia. To my horror its over 6 ppm. So an 80% waterchange later, I get it down to safer levels add an ion exchange resin and put the anacharis back in. Right now I've done my 4th waterchange today since the ammonia does not want to stop going up. My rainbow starts getting extremely stressed with heavy breathing so I put him in my goldfish tank (only tank I have large enough to support him) since they have similar water parameters and temperatures. I keep this tank at 77* and the Goldie tank at 75-76* (Fancy Goldfish). I try to keep him and the goldfish seperate and go to a meeting. I come home and to my horror find my beloved goldfish missing some scales and having shredded fins. The shark got out of the barracade! So the shark goes back in the toxic tank which now tests at 2 ppm :-( and I do more waterchanges. I don't have access to bio-spira right now so I try Seachem Stability which I heard works well. Some of my other fish are now showing ammonia poisoning symptoms too. Anyways this was one of the worst fish days I've ever had. Yesterday my tank is perfect and tests perfect and today, Biofilter collapse. I am assuming that the removal of the anacharis + some sort of toxicity in the excel is the cause of this. I hope to remedy the situation soon with no fish death.
Fish Day From Hell
- Thread starter rrkss
- Start date
Sounds nasty. Sorry you're having to deal with it. I would suppose that if you had enough anacharis in the tank it could have made up a large part of the biofilter. If the tank is well established and you still have some plant mass in there, then I'm not really convinced that is the cause. I'm not sure of the effect of Excel on filter bacteria, but you would probably have to dose a bit over what's recommended.
How's the KH and pH in the tank?
How's the KH and pH in the tank?
The anacharis made up a big chunk of the plantmass 30-40%. I assume that it did suck up most of the NH3 prior to its removal. I dosed the excel following the instructions. Right now I have 0 fish dead but lots of heavy breathing and some red arteries visible in the tails. One fish usually a bottomdweller was gasping up top. I've complexed the ammonia and waterchanged it. I also have an ion exchange resin in. Pretty much I am doing everything I can to remedy the situation. My problem is the damage that the ammonia did during the night. 6 ppm ammonia is incredibly high and I am sure that some gill damage occured. My poor goldfish. The shark took two chunks out of it. One side had some mild bleeding and the other side just lost the scales. The fins are also shredded so he looks in bad shape. Water quality in that tank is perfect so I hope that he heals up quickly.
When I 1st started dosing Excel I also noticed cloudy water. After testing I found my Am was 1.0 and Ni was .5
It took about 3 days for Am to get back to 0 but about a week for Ni to go back to 0. The Ni spiked at 1.0 during that week. Daily 50% pwc solved the problem. I haven't seen any spikes since and still dose the Excel.
Maybe Excel shocks the biosystem until it adapts to it?
Maybe Excel should recommend half the dose for the 1st week.
It took about 3 days for Am to get back to 0 but about a week for Ni to go back to 0. The Ni spiked at 1.0 during that week. Daily 50% pwc solved the problem. I haven't seen any spikes since and still dose the Excel.
Maybe Excel shocks the biosystem until it adapts to it?
Maybe Excel should recommend half the dose for the 1st week.
Could you have possibly gotten a hold of a "bad" bottle of Excel? Shot in the dark, I know.
Maybe an email to Seachem can clarify what happened? If you followed the bottle to dose, then they have to have an answer for this.
Roan
Maybe an email to Seachem can clarify what happened? If you followed the bottle to dose, then they have to have an answer for this.
Roan
IceH2O said:
This could be the case but a 6 ppm ammonia increase within 24 hours would mean a total biofilter collapse without a list of the ingredients I would not know if this is what happened. The last time I saw those levels were during my fishless cycling.