Fish Day From Hell

RRK, since you can't get biospira to help ouy, hou about if you happen to bring another filter from a good working tank for a while? This could help.
 
i dont think it's possible for ammonia to go from 0 to 6ppm in 1 day just by removing some plants. heck even if you remove the entire filter system/all plants it should still not go from 0 to 6ppm. are you having goldfish in that tank? or overstocked.

my ancharis never recovered from excel. I will not use that product again, dont care of people says just not worth the trouble.
 
Update on the situation. My water still tests terrible. Ammonia this morning tested back up around 4-8 ppm range but the seachem ammonia alert says that no NH3 form is in the tank (thank god I bought prime about 2 days before this happened). I always used to use a sodium thiosulfate for waterchanges but the one time an emergency strikes, I have an ammonia binding chemical. I did a 60% waterchange this morning. Nitrites went up from 0.0 to 0.25 so the biofilter is showing some recovery. I did happen to get ahold of bio-spira which the shop did have refrigerated and threw it into the filter. The fish are still breathing heavily but the ammonia is at least not poisoning them anymore. My two goldfish look a little bit better today. Both ate like pigs and begged for more food. I think they will heal up just fine. So far no fish loss. All I can be thankful for is that something like this happened to me who has the knowledge to deal with the problem instead of someone else who does not have the knowledge.
 
gagaliya said:
i dont think it's possible for ammonia to go from 0 to 6ppm in 1 day just by removing some plants. heck even if you remove the entire filter system/all plants it should still not go from 0 to 6ppm. are you having goldfish in that tank? or overstocked.

my ancharis never recovered from excel. I will not use that product again, dont care of people says just not worth the trouble.

Tank is not overstocked but at its limit in fish load. Those ammonia levels are possible. 6 ppm is not that much ammonia masswise it is 6 milligrams or 6/1,000,000 of a kilogram per liter of water. And in the event up a total biofilter collapse those numbers can rise rather quickly. Its the caustic effects of it that make it toxic. What happens is that the NH3 form of ammonia react with water to form NH4OH or ammonium hydroxide. Hydroxides are used in products such as lye and bleach and have very caustic effects to living tissue. They are also used in depillatory creams (Nair) since they are so good at destroying organic matter. This same effect happens on fish tissue and the damage once done is irreversable. My fish will have to heal on their own so my goal right now is to prevent futher damage.
 
Plants actually utilize ammonia I believe. As for the Excel, this is a shot in the dark, but on Excel it says that it might cause side effects/harm to vals and anacharis. Maybe the Excel is causing negative effects on your anacharis, and an unhealthy plant wouldn't purify the water as much?

I know that's just a shot in the dark, but I try.
 
Well the fish look worse off. They are starting to heal from the ammonia damage the only problem is that the healing process involves swelling. This swelling reduces waterflow through the gills and lowers blood oxygen content. I wish they had some anti-inflammatory agents to give these fish as it would help a lot. No fish death yet but my entire tank except the Tetras are hanging out at the top now heavily breathing. I've done all I can and now its up to them to hold on. The ate very sparsely tonight not going after the food like normal.
 
Well I got my response from seachem.

Hello,
What size bottle of Excel do you have? We have discovered a misprint
on the 2L and 4L label. This could result in a overdose of Excel.
These caps are actually 10 ml not the 5 mL that is stated on the
label. This sounds like what could occur if that was the case.

I will get some products out to you to help clear up this problem and
compensate you for the trouble.

Apparently this product has some biocidal properties at higher dosages and the misprint caused me to overdose killing my nitrifying bacteria. Ammonia tested at the maximum the test kit will go this morning but the ammonia binding chemcals are still at work. NH3 form of ammonia is at 0 so thats good. Nitrite is going up showing that the bio-spira is working. I will do a 90% waterchange as soon as the 48 hours of the bio-spira is up to reduce levels. At least seachem recognizes the problems and is doing what they can to fix them. This event will probably save lots of other fish from similar problems. I still love their company and will buy their products just will verify dosages with them prior to dosing products which warn not to overdose.
 
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Hey, so sorry to hear about your horrors. Maybe you could get seachem to send you some purigen right away? That stuff works great - it could knock your ammonia down right away and allow your fish to breath easier for the time being. It also takes out the nitrites...
Cathy
 
polyfilter work well to to help pull out impurities, such as medicine and heavy metals.
 
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