Can smoke from a fireplace kill fish?

F

fabsroman

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Sep 30, 2008
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West Friendship, MD
I knew my life was going too smoothly. I have 2 tanks set up at my parents' place. A 75 and a 55, with the 55 acting as a heavily planted refugium for the 75. AT 2:15 this morning I get a call from my mom about my fish not looking too good and a lot of them already dead. I hussle over there, start with a water change, and take out a glass of water for testing. Everything pretty much tests out just fine.

0 ppm ammonia
0 ppm nitrite
30 ppm nitrate, which is a little high but the tank has been there before and the fish were fine.
9 kh
7.0 ph from both the test kit and the ph controller

The only thing I can think of that might have killed my fish is the fire that my dad put on tonight. He hasn't run that fireplace for well over a year, and I haven't lost any fish in well over a year. When I came in the house, I could smell the smoke right away, and the fireplace is in the basement. Being in the basement felt like my college/law school days of being in a bar. My eyes are still hurting. Luckily, I was able to save half of the fish.

What I lost was:
1 L-81 Gold Nugget
5 kubotai botia
4 SAE
8 bleeding heart tetras
7 hatchets
20 neons

By the way, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't that bad. When I first realized it was my mom calling at 2:15 in the morning, I thought somebody had gone to the hospital, somebody had been arrested, or worse. While losing about $250 in fish doesn't make me happy, it doesn't bring me to tears either.
 
I don't think normal smoke of itself could kill the fish, but if the fire hasn't been used in ages but has built up cleaning products and dust, then who knows what's released when they burn?
 
We regularly burn fires in our fireplaces, and the fish tanks in those rooms have never been affected. But your dad's fire sounds just dangerous for many reasons.
 
the amount of toxic smoke it would take to kill your fish would make a human VERY sick. i would look into what kind of wood he burnt, and as Karl mentioned above, how much residue and such was built up beforehand.
 
play it safe and have the fireplace tested.

another factor is CO.
 
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why these fish all died last night. There isn't any water test that was extremely out of the ordinary, and the only parameter that I can think of that changed is the smoke from the fireplace. While it didn't make me sick, it definitely gave me a headache.

Is there any way the fire could have pulled too much oxygen from the room? Probably not, but I am grasping at straws here to try and understand what happened to my fish last night.
 
I talked to my wife about the Carbon Monoxide this morning. How quickly can that stuff be absorbed by water? I should move the carbon monoxide alarm from their 3rd floor and put it in the basement with that fireplace.

He always does this when he starts burning it for the first couple of times during the year. For some reason, he just cannot get a draft up the chimney, so he ends up filling the house with smoke, and I would guess carbon monoxide. Lucky for me, last year my mom did not let him put the fireplace on. Too bad for my fish that she didn't stick to her guns this year.
 
We have a fireplace that is run every so often in the winter and it hasn't affect any of my tanks yet. However, a day after a fire, there is a hint of "fireplace smell" in the air but nothing overbearing, I would also be a bit worried about your fireplace as mentioned. I don't think they are supposed to smell so much a day after and on a different floor of the house.... the only floor that smells a little in my house is the main floor. The basement nor the upstairs and definitely the attic doesn't smell at all.

A trick with getting the smoke to rise is twisting a page or 3 of the newspaper together when starting the firse and put it up close to the flue. The smoking paper will lead the rest.... or should.

However, aside from that, I would also go ahead and get that chimney cleaned and inspected.... something doesn't sound right.
 
Ask your dad what he started the fire with. If he used any petroleum based accelerators, the residue very well could have landed on the surface of the water killing the most sensitive fish.


As far as the smoke going up the chimney instead of throughout the house, sounds like your dad needs to practive makeing a fire that doesnt smolder so much, this will also send smoke out into the house instead of up the chimney. While Im no expert at building a fire, Im used to putting them out, he needs to get fat wood or some other natural source of kinling that burns hot and start out with small pieces of wood and graduate to larger ones as the fire gets hotter. He also needs to be sure the flue is open all the way BEFORE trying to light a fire. If it is a windy day outside, this could cause the smoke from a fire to blow back in when you first start it.

It could be a coincidence that the fish died at the same time the first fire was lit, but I dont think this is the case..
 
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