O2 levels drop with every water change?

TrashmanTodd

TrashmanTodd

AC Members
Jan 27, 2002
125
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Reno, NV
Hey All,

It seems the past few times I've done a water change the water turns slightly cloudy and the fish hover at the top for about a day. Then the water clears up and everything is fine.

I can't figure it out. All my parameters are fine;

PH 6.8 - 7.0
KH 100 ppm
GH 80 ppm
Nitrites 0
nitrates 0

It's a 75 gal planted tank with co2 injection and 260 watts of lighting.

The only thing I can figure is it must be the water coming out of the tap.

Any help would be great!

Trashman
 
You don't list your ammonia levels. Would you please test your tap water for ammonia and post those, please.

Are you on city water and do you use a water conditioner? What kind?

The cloudiness, and the fact that it disppears in one day tell me it's probably ammonia and probably from chloramine in the tap water. This is normal.

However, the fish gasping sounds like your water conditioner does not deal with the ammonia properly after the bond is broken, then the ammonia is in the tank and hurting the fish.

Roan
 
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TrashmanTodd said:
I'm on city water, I'll have to get a test kit for the ammonia levels.
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Yes, it's important to have an ammonia kit. Liquid, please? AP is good and cheap.

As far as water treatment I use AmQuel.
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AmQuel or AmQuel+? If it's AmQuel, and I'm remembering correctly, it does not deal with the residual ammonia at all.

The majority of municipalities treat their water with one of two chemicals: chlorine or chloramine. Chloramine is chlorine bonded with ammonia. It far more stable than chlorine is, so a lot of municipalities either use it all the time, or use it during certain seasons of the year. Anyhow, in order to make chloramine non-toxic to fish, the conditioner has to break the chlorine/ammonia bond AND then change the ammonia into a ammonium. The ammonia goes from NH3 to NH4+, the latter being non-harmful to fish and can still be used by bacteria and plants. The problem is that many conditioners only break the bond and remove the chlorine. They do nothing with the ammonia. So, you are left with a tank full of toxic ammonia.

Your biofilter is functioning correcting in that the ammonia is gone in a day, however your fish are suffering from it. Assuming that this is what the problem is, of course. We still need to make sure.

Can you pick up a small bottle of Prime and try that? Not to market it, just that we *know* it works and *how* it works. It's far easier to troubleshoot a problem when there are known factors at work.

In VA they use chloramine in the winter and chlorine in the summer. I have no clue what they would do in Nevada and they are not obligated to tell you before they switch. You could contact your water department and request a report as well.

Roan
 
No, it's not the plus so I will get a bottle of that.

What do you mean by a bottle of "Prime"?

It could be that the water co changed their practices because this just started about 2 - 3 months ago when winter got really heavy and all the extra run-off started coming out of the mountains.

Trashman
 
TrashmanTodd said:
No, it's not the plus so I will get a bottle of that.

What do you mean by a bottle of "Prime"?
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Prime made by Seachem. This stuff:

http://www.seachem.com/products/product_pages/Prime.html

I recommend that over the Amquel or Amquel+. Amquel+ has know problems in low pH water. We *know* Prime will convert the NH3 to NH4+. Most of us use it. Just a small bottle if it's a cost factor. I don't want to push a product on you, but it will help if you use something most of us are familar with. A small bottle won't be a huge investment and it'll give us viable numbers.

It could be that the water co changed their practices because this just started about 2 - 3 months ago when winter got really heavy and all the extra run-off started coming out of the mountains.
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That's exactly about when they would start running chloramine and higher phosphates.

Roan
 
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