otos dying, please help!
- Thread starter LunchBox
- Start date
I know we're beating the issue a bit but... I find the the AP nitrate kit is particular to the little things often skipped. Shake the bottles well before use. Add the 1st bottle, mix, add the second bottle, mix again, let sit 5 minutes. Any shortcuts will often give a false negative.
The other possibility is if the kit is old. Depending on where you bought it it might have sat on the shelf, or is this your's from your previous tanks? On the top of the label for each bottle is a lot number. The last four digits are the month and year of production. I believe the nitrate test is supposed to be good for three years.
The other possibility is if the kit is old. Depending on where you bought it it might have sat on the shelf, or is this your's from your previous tanks? On the top of the label for each bottle is a lot number. The last four digits are the month and year of production. I believe the nitrate test is supposed to be good for three years.
i bought three otos about 9 days ago and they're all still going strong, active, eating, and being cute, even though my tank is mini-cycling because of them, they all seem fine to me 
bought 3 otos about a year ago and aclimated them to my tank over an 8 hour process with the lights out. I had heard that the don't always aclimate easily. Anyways last time I moved the tank they were all still in there, though I very rarely see more than one (if that) durring the day.
well I bought the kit about a month ago, and according t othe lot #s all my bottles were done last fall (08-05)
I guess the first thing to do is get my hands on another test and see if that gives me different results. According to my city's water report we should have about 2ppm of nitrates in the water straight out of the tap, which isn't really enough to register on the test I have. I'll try a different test though and see if it's just the PA test or if my water really is as weird as it looks.
I guess the first thing to do is get my hands on another test and see if that gives me different results. According to my city's water report we should have about 2ppm of nitrates in the water straight out of the tap, which isn't really enough to register on the test I have. I'll try a different test though and see if it's just the PA test or if my water really is as weird as it looks.
LunchBox said:
I don't think those are the expiry date for AP test kits. See:
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=63695
The last four digits are the month and year of manufacture.
The lot numbers show the manufacture date, not the expiration date.
The linked post is correct for the expiration dating. I recently received an email from AP about expiration and it matches what is posted in the link.
The linked post is correct for the expiration dating. I recently received an email from AP about expiration and it matches what is posted in the link.
so my test kit should be good until august of 2008.
the good news is the oto that wasn't looking too great the other day has been getting a little more active and is looking a little better today. hopefully he just wasn't feeling well and is getting over it.
I'm going to pick up a different test kit for nitrates today and run both my old one and the new one when I get home from work and see what they say. I'm still not picking up any nitrites or ammonia, so I really ought to be seeing nitrates. I guess I'll know more tonight.
the good news is the oto that wasn't looking too great the other day has been getting a little more active and is looking a little better today. hopefully he just wasn't feeling well and is getting over it.
I'm going to pick up a different test kit for nitrates today and run both my old one and the new one when I get home from work and see what they say. I'm still not picking up any nitrites or ammonia, so I really ought to be seeing nitrates. I guess I'll know more tonight.
ok I got a new nitrate test kit. the tetratest nitrate drop test( http://www.tetra-fish.com/Catalog/product.aspx?id=78). I did this one as well as my old AP drop kit (it came with the freshwater master test kit). I followed all instructions on both and here is what I came up with:
AP Nitrate test: 0ppm
Tetratest Nitrate test: 12.5ppm
nitrites and ammonia still read 0ppm, so my initial thought is that I'm either messing up the AP test somehow (which I can't imagine) or it's just a bad couple bottles of stuff. The tetratest one got its color (orange=12.5ppm) right away and stayed that color for the full 10 minutes required i nthe instructions. My AP test was yellow (0) for the full 5 minutes required in its instructions.
this more or less explains the number problem, but the nitrate level isn't high enough to kill off the otos. I was in the LFS I bought them from today and looked in the oto tank and there were a couple dead ones on the bottom so perhaps I just got a couple sick fish. any other ideas would be great but at this point it doesn't look like there was anything specific that caused it unless my tetras have been chewing on them while I wasn't looking.
AP Nitrate test: 0ppm
Tetratest Nitrate test: 12.5ppm
nitrites and ammonia still read 0ppm, so my initial thought is that I'm either messing up the AP test somehow (which I can't imagine) or it's just a bad couple bottles of stuff. The tetratest one got its color (orange=12.5ppm) right away and stayed that color for the full 10 minutes required i nthe instructions. My AP test was yellow (0) for the full 5 minutes required in its instructions.
this more or less explains the number problem, but the nitrate level isn't high enough to kill off the otos. I was in the LFS I bought them from today and looked in the oto tank and there were a couple dead ones on the bottom so perhaps I just got a couple sick fish. any other ideas would be great but at this point it doesn't look like there was anything specific that caused it unless my tetras have been chewing on them while I wasn't looking.
You are probably better at following directions than I am, but for a while I was forgetting to shake the AP Nitrate kit's #2 bottle as directed. I was getting lower results than I should have, but when I started shaking the bottle, my nitrate tests started to make sense again.
