Tea Tree Oil

Not to go real far off topic here, but in another thread I was told that if I had not removed my Biowheels when I did the meds cycle that I basically killed off (probably) all of my good bacteria in addition to that which I was treating.

My question here is this - if that were the case - wouldn't the first thing to spike be Ammonia and not Nitrites?

Just curious because my Ammonia is reading a flat zero, and my Nitrites have gone up to 0.50, but I truly believe this is from the new cartridges I just put in to remove the meds.
 
I've found the ammonia-converting species to be harder than the one that eat up nitrites. Like, when I changed my gravel completely, I only saw nitrites, no ammonia at all. So I'm thinking the ammonia eating species survived in the gravel and other surfaces in your tank, but the nitrite eating one is having a harder time recovering. It'll happen, but could take 2-3 weeks.

Actually I was having a heck of a time with nitrites because first I did a 100% gravel change, then I did a salt ich treatment. Both of them resulted in staggered nitrite woes, so I've been battling nitrite for almost a month and having to do 2-3 water changes every day for the last few weeks (I have 3 tanks that have all had new gravel). It's amazing what we're willing to do for our fish, isn't it :D

Yes, letting your BioWheel dry out completely will have killed the nitrifying bacteria living on it.
 
Yeah this is what I thought. The guys in another forum where saying that because I didn't take the Biowheels out of the Emperor's when I added the meds that I most likely lost the good bacteria that they had accumulated, but I figured that wasn't the case. They were still moving/rotating the whole time and never missed a beat (the Biowheels never dried out - they just got a little darker than they already where after the meds cycle).

The Nitrites are manageable right now, but will most likely go down with tomorrow's 15g water change (over perhaps after a couple of those). I pretty much figured that there was no way all the good bacteria went away, and probably little (if any) at all was lost.
 
edit to above post: I meant to say "hardier" in the first sentence. The ammonia-converting species of bacteria are hardier, meaning harder to kill and more likely to survive perturbances, than the nitrite-converting species.

Let the 30 min editing window slip by...
 
Oh I'm sure they are, but my whole point to that matter was that it would seem a bit off for a meds manufacturer to produce and sell a product that would completely wipe out your bacteria colony.

I think my guy down at my LFS had it right this time - the Nitrites spiked because of the new filters that went in, and not because of the meds that were present.
 
i used mela/primafix right after a cycle and i never saw any spike or damage to my system. I followed the directions and did not repeat dose after a 50% waterchange.

What it did was heal some damaged mouths from LFS abuse and I haven't seen the wispy stuff since.

From what I gather Melafix is best at helping the healing process of torn fins the most. A lot of people use it for koi ponds and I hear the pond bottles are the same price but more concentrated and need much less a dose.

You are supposed to only add them a little bit daily with no water changes until a week into the treatment. I think it's to accumulate everything to the dose so its a gradual buildup.

Turn off surface skimmers. Mine would foam up inside the tube but make sure no dust or oily stuff gathers at the surface. I would turn my surface skimmer on for 10 mins once a day during treatment but I have an open tank and dust tends to gather at the surface.

You might lose bacteria but if you dose it slowly it has time to rebuild before you see any spikes or anything.

I wouldn't keep it in my tank at all times, though. That's just crazy.
 
from what I hear, the antibacterial properties of tea tree oil and Melafix are minor if any at all. So it should not damage your biological filter. But as with any time you are treating your fish, you should keep a close eye on water parameters and be prepared to do water changes in case there are ammonia/nitrite spikes.

I think if you want something holistic for long-term use in your tank Novalek Kordon's Novaqua Plus contains herbs and vitamins that are supposed to boost fishy immune systems. http://www.novalek.com/kpd88.htm

But their products (Novaqua, Polyaqua, maybe even Amquel) have the additional property of removing medications, which could be either a good or bad thing. Don't know how they do that, though.
 
sly2kusa said:
I believe that's based on human consumption and quantities.
Click to expand...

It is, but gives some good insight into the chemical properties of the stuff.
 
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