There is nothing else to say except I am so sorry to hear about your loss!!! What a total bummer!
fish kill preminition
- Thread starter mountain_webste
- Start date
i was expecting some crazy post about a dream or something that gave you the creeps. been avoiding this thread because of it, honestly. decided to give in and all i can say is that really sucks... sorry for your fishy losses.
I know, sorry for the hoaky title, but it was just weird...I had this strange feeling that something was wrong. I'm usually the first person to roll their eyes when someone starts spouting off about "pychic" feelings etc. I kept telling myself that I was imagining things and then I gave in and figured 30 seconds to run downstairs to check the tank for peace of mind was worth it. Just weird...
Sorry for your loss. When I get those eerie feelings I am often dismissive of them. Too often it turns out the premonition was correct and I should have paid attention to it.
GoldLenny
Senior Member? Do I get a 5% disc.?
I don't know if you can say this yet. Since your lights stayed on for around four more hours after dosing, I'm not sure that was the problem, although, ideally, dosing after turning your lights on earlier in the day is probably best.
Have you always dosed later in the evening like this or was this the first time you've dosed so late to lights out?
You should probably go to Seachem's site and use their Contact Us page to see what they say about this.
If it wasn't the Excel, it would be nice for you to know so you can look at other possible causes.
Lighting is not going to affect an Excel overdose. The plants don't use the carbon THAT quickly.
You would have had to dump in a pretty good amount of Excel to get this to happen.
You say you "dug out your old test kit" meaning it hadnt been used in a while? It's possible you could have had an erroneous death and ammonia spike that you didn't notice, if you hadnt measured your water before you noticed the deaths.
You would have had to dump in a pretty good amount of Excel to get this to happen.
You say you "dug out your old test kit" meaning it hadnt been used in a while? It's possible you could have had an erroneous death and ammonia spike that you didn't notice, if you hadnt measured your water before you noticed the deaths.
I generally dose excel between 6 - 7pm when I get home from work, but on water change days I will wait until I'm adding the new water which usually ends up being a bit later, 8 - 9. I've followed this same routine with both my tanks many times before without incident. Both tanks are on timers with lights-off between 11pm and midnight.
My only thought is that I may have inadvertantly added too much excel. Maybe, to your point, this was the perfect storm of an accidental higher dose, a little later than usual. Though this is a 165G tank and I just completed ~30% water change. While I didn't measue, it's not like I added a cup of excel or anything. Per your suggestion, I'll ping Seachem to see if they have a suggestion. Oh, and I'd been using this same bottle of excel for a month or more on both my tanks so I don't suspect a tainted/bad batch or anything.
I just can't imagine what else could have caused it. Temp was stable, amonia even after all the deaths was <.025. I didn't test for nitrites, but I have no reason to suspect a spike since I did nothing to the filtration and had just completed a large water change. Every other aspect of my water change routine was normal - vacuming for waste, method and amount of water treatment used etc., etc.
ammonia should be 0 at all times. if you have ammonia spiked, you will have nitrites spiked at some point when the bacteria catch up.
Yeah, all my tanks have been stable and I hadn't used the test kit in a year(s).
I suppose it is possible that there was a death I didn't notice, but I had no bodies and didn't notice anyone "missing" when I did the water change on Sunday. On Monday when I discovered/recovered the bodies they were all fairly fresh with no signs of decomposition (bodies in tact, clear eyes, no bloating, stiff with rigor)
Also, this is a 165G tank that just received a 30% water change. I'm running 2 Rena XP3's. I could be wrong, but even if there was an dead fish or two I didn't catch I don't think amonia would spike that fast given the volume of water I'm dealing with.
