A few of you may remember my red fish thread. But if you don't basically, the fish for my experiments have had red around their mouths and fins. It has also been seen in the eggs. We suspected a bacterial infection, as they are mouthbrooders we assumed the infection was transferred from the mouth to the eggs via contact. We sent fish off for testing to a lab. However, the techs didn't send live fish, which they would need in order to culture the bacteria. The lab said they had "an assault to their system" and recommended increased water changes and lowering our nitrates. They were already no higher than 5-10, with an occasional spike on a long weekend to 20 ppm. Ammonia and nitrites are always zero. We have a carbon filter that all the water runs through before it enters the sump, which is supposed to remove chlorine, and the water flow is meant to drain half the total volume a day. The system is made up of tanks on a central filtration system. There is currently 4200 L (924 gallons) of water in the system.
Now, we had some fish come from Iceland for a different project. A bunch of them randomly died and we suspected a chlorine spike as you could smell it in the room. We then learned that the filter wasn't working correctly and the chlorine was not being removed. I know this seems irrelevant to my problem, but bear with me for a second.
Two weeks ago we FINALLY (after 6 months of waiting and begging and arguing) got the go ahead to treat with antibiotics. We dosed the system a double dose (ok for this drug) and this meant having the water change system off for one week. Unfortunately, because of the bioload, the effect of the antibiotics on the filter, and the lack of changes we had an ammonia spike (2 ppm), nitrite spike (+5 ppm) and nitrate spike (100 ppm). However, the fish looked better! The redness was lessening, they weren't gasping at the surface, they were eating well and had spawned. After reading the water levels we decided to immediately turn the water flow back on and get the fish into some better quality water. Two days after that happened I noticed redness recurring and worsening. The fish were gasping at the surface (but weren't with high ammonia and nitrites?) and their fins were looking haggard. So, based on what happened with the Icelandic fish, I decided to test the chlorine. To my surprise we had 2 mg/L of chlorine in the tanks. I was shocked and tested it again. It came up the same, I had a friend who is the tech for the Icelandic fish watch me test it again and we got the same high result. I went to tell my supervisor and he told me to add Sodium thiosfulfate to remove it and then he started talking to our fish care guys. This resulted in a blow up. . . so much yelling. . . Anywho they tested the water out of the pipe leading to the filter and according to them it only came up as 1 mg/L (to me it looked like 2.5), then they tested it after it exited the filter and it came up as trace levels (the filter company says it removes 80% of the chlorine and that those levels are safe for fish). However, they never tested it out of the tanks.
We convinced them to put dechlor on a drip into the sump last Friday. The fish started looking better. Today I tested the water out of one of the tanks again, because they were gasping at the surface and sure enough Chlorine. It looks to me like between 0.5 and 1 mg/L, but I attached the pic here to see if I'm reading it right. The test is testing for free chlorine and is made to be sold to labs, so it should be really accurate. The pics lost some brightness in transferring them from my phone to my laptop, so I hope they're good enough to see.
I've also attached pics of the fish and their redness. I'd like to know if this looks like chlorine burns to anyone.
Thanks for reading my novel.
Now, we had some fish come from Iceland for a different project. A bunch of them randomly died and we suspected a chlorine spike as you could smell it in the room. We then learned that the filter wasn't working correctly and the chlorine was not being removed. I know this seems irrelevant to my problem, but bear with me for a second.
Two weeks ago we FINALLY (after 6 months of waiting and begging and arguing) got the go ahead to treat with antibiotics. We dosed the system a double dose (ok for this drug) and this meant having the water change system off for one week. Unfortunately, because of the bioload, the effect of the antibiotics on the filter, and the lack of changes we had an ammonia spike (2 ppm), nitrite spike (+5 ppm) and nitrate spike (100 ppm). However, the fish looked better! The redness was lessening, they weren't gasping at the surface, they were eating well and had spawned. After reading the water levels we decided to immediately turn the water flow back on and get the fish into some better quality water. Two days after that happened I noticed redness recurring and worsening. The fish were gasping at the surface (but weren't with high ammonia and nitrites?) and their fins were looking haggard. So, based on what happened with the Icelandic fish, I decided to test the chlorine. To my surprise we had 2 mg/L of chlorine in the tanks. I was shocked and tested it again. It came up the same, I had a friend who is the tech for the Icelandic fish watch me test it again and we got the same high result. I went to tell my supervisor and he told me to add Sodium thiosfulfate to remove it and then he started talking to our fish care guys. This resulted in a blow up. . . so much yelling. . . Anywho they tested the water out of the pipe leading to the filter and according to them it only came up as 1 mg/L (to me it looked like 2.5), then they tested it after it exited the filter and it came up as trace levels (the filter company says it removes 80% of the chlorine and that those levels are safe for fish). However, they never tested it out of the tanks.
We convinced them to put dechlor on a drip into the sump last Friday. The fish started looking better. Today I tested the water out of one of the tanks again, because they were gasping at the surface and sure enough Chlorine. It looks to me like between 0.5 and 1 mg/L, but I attached the pic here to see if I'm reading it right. The test is testing for free chlorine and is made to be sold to labs, so it should be really accurate. The pics lost some brightness in transferring them from my phone to my laptop, so I hope they're good enough to see.
I've also attached pics of the fish and their redness. I'd like to know if this looks like chlorine burns to anyone.
Thanks for reading my novel.
Good job figuring out the problem and convincing "them" to let you do something about it. Good luck with further... problem solving on this matter.
