The fish lost were all my genetically engineered colored Tetras. Love the colors. Anyway - my assistant was gone this week due to illness so I had to do 70-80% water changes on both my tanks (one is 50 gallon, the problem one is 29 gallon) - If I haven't mentioned before I'm disabled and on oxygen so a big water change that takes my assistant 1.5 hours takes me about 7 hours due to all the rest breaks.
Here in Topeka Kansas we have a water PH of 9.4. That's what the water report says and that number matches my measurement of the PH of the water out of my tap. Most fresh water tropical fish do OK between 6.5 and 8. My GH is 190ppm and my KH is 95. I really don't pay a huge amount of attention to all that other than I try to buy fish that prefer a 7.0 PH or close to it. I got up and the smell was coming from the smaller tank, which had cleared a little but was still pretty white in color - just taking a mental inventory it seemed all the fish were still swimming but I thought maybe one of my GIANT DoJo's had passed away because no other fish would be able to raise that kind of stink. you can barely see your fish cloudy. It dissipates in about 1 hour and your water is crystal clear. I also use Prime as the water conditioner. My tanks are cycled and have been for a long time. When we mix the Neutral Regulator and Prime we do it FOR EACH BUCKET OF WATER so they all match. I don't want to go pouring a bucket of 9.4 PH water and stir it up in my aquarium with the fish living in 7.0 water. I'd basically have to remove all the fish which is pretty stressful on them, and with a few of our fish very time consuming. In fact I killed some one time by leaving fish in a bucket for too long - (and we didn't even put a bubbler in) - I assume they died from lack of oxygen. Anyway it's a routine we've done for over a year now with only the occasional problem - yesterday being one of those days.
I did the water change for the smaller tank last Sunday night. All was well. Tank clouded up as usual and then got crystal clear an hour or two later. I was in pain and misery due to my sciatica but it was done. Monday I had a Dr's appt and ran a couple of errands. Wish the Dr was the type that handles
sciatica but she isn't.
On Tuesday I did the water change on the big tank- by then a some water had evaporated from the smaller tank so I had aa little leftover water so I poured in about 1 gallon to top it off and it clouded up the smaller tank - I thought that was a little strange given the water ratio, one gallon shouldn't have clouded up the tank that bad - but the Neutral Regulator always turns the water in the tank white so I figured it would clear up in a couple hours - I went to bed.
Wednesday I woke up to a horrible smell. It was like 10 dogs had pooped in my bedroom. I got up and the smell was coming from the smaller tank, which had cleared a little but was still pretty white in color - just taking a mental inventory and trying to see through the haze it seemed all the fish were still swimming and alive, but I thought maybe one of my GIANT DoJo's had passed away because no other fish would be big enough to raise that kind of stink. But I could clearly see all of the bigger fish, Now the big tank had the exact same type of water in it and it was cloudy for 1 hour and cleared up just fine and no smell, just like our tanks usually do. SOMETHING was different about that 1 gallon of water I poured into the smaller tank or something was different about my smaller tank.
So after having some coffee, some anti-nausea medicine and had taken all my pills and done my breathing treatments and fed the cat and fed all the feral cats outside - the whole time trying not to cry because I knew I HAD to do a water change immediately. I really thought about taking all the fish out for this one so I could remove all the water - but I couldn't even see all the fish clearly. I have no idea what they thought about it. So I removed about 80% of the water as quickly as I could - that's as far as I could go or I would have some really stressed fish. Right then one of my tetra's turned on her side dead. Then another, then another etc., until all 6 colored tetras took that moment to die together - so I'm really assuming chemistry is responsible since I didn't drop a brick in the tank to cause this or maybe mass hysterical suicide?. I removed the little dead tetra and did an inventory - every other fish that I have in that tank was still alive - BUT the one thing most of these fish have in common is that they use their swim bladder to breathe regular air - so they weren't entirely dependent on the water oxygen. I do have two types of fish that I don't know if they can breathe regular air or not, I have a Tomasi L188a Pleco (affectionally called "my favorite martian"), and I have 3 baby Bristlenose Lemon Pleco L-144 and I don't know if either of those species can breathe regular air. The rest of my fish are Dojo loaches and Dwarf Gourami - all of which can breath fresh air. So my thought at the moment was that the concentration of whatever was the problem was greatest at the bottom of the tank (or the tetra just died due to stress all at the same time) At the time I should have tested the water or at least taken out a large enough sample to test it later but I was just thinking of getting that tank filled back up. The smell was pretty much gone so that was reassuring. So I filled it back up, using the same prime and the same Neutral Regulator and it got cloudy again and today (Thursday and my Birthday) it's still cloudy but far better than it was. So the tank is still not behaving "normally" with that Neutral Regulator - we don't measure it out when we put it in the bucket but sprinkle some in the lid and when it looks like about 1/4 tsp. we stop - both my assistant and I bake a lot and easily visualize 1/4 tsp without measuring. That's enough to make the PH of that bucket 7.0 - I obviously put it in since the water was white. If I hadn't put prime in probably nothing would happen because the other 28 gallons of water DID have prime in it - but I'm sure I put prime in it too. Now it's 1:30 am Friday and you can really see the fish now but it's still pretty cloudy. Nobody else has died. Smell is normal. In my bigger tank - it's stayed clear the entire time and no fish have died.
Today I did take some measurements on the water in the smaller tank: Ammonia-0, Nitrite-0,Nitrates-10, PH 7.2 What WAS interesting was measuring the Ammonia. I'm using the standard API kit and you put 8 drops of stuff from 2 bottles and, at least for me it always turns a little bit yellow. Sometimes it's so close to the yellow on the card it's hard to tell but this time the water stayed COMPLETELY CLEAR I have NEVER seen that before so that's strange. The other thing is that I'm assuming that it was the 1 gallon of top-off water that caused the problem when the problem might have already been there but hadn't had time enough to develop the smell and everything. Whatever it is did react with the new water to make the entire tank cloudy - but to me it still points to that one bucket of water.
So can anybody solve this mystery? BTW Seachem's Neutral Regulator contains "Phosphate buffers and conditioning agents"
Picture taken about 1:45 am on Friday 1/22/2021
Here in Topeka Kansas we have a water PH of 9.4. That's what the water report says and that number matches my measurement of the PH of the water out of my tap. Most fresh water tropical fish do OK between 6.5 and 8. My GH is 190ppm and my KH is 95. I really don't pay a huge amount of attention to all that other than I try to buy fish that prefer a 7.0 PH or close to it. I got up and the smell was coming from the smaller tank, which had cleared a little but was still pretty white in color - just taking a mental inventory it seemed all the fish were still swimming but I thought maybe one of my GIANT DoJo's had passed away because no other fish would be able to raise that kind of stink. you can barely see your fish cloudy. It dissipates in about 1 hour and your water is crystal clear. I also use Prime as the water conditioner. My tanks are cycled and have been for a long time. When we mix the Neutral Regulator and Prime we do it FOR EACH BUCKET OF WATER so they all match. I don't want to go pouring a bucket of 9.4 PH water and stir it up in my aquarium with the fish living in 7.0 water. I'd basically have to remove all the fish which is pretty stressful on them, and with a few of our fish very time consuming. In fact I killed some one time by leaving fish in a bucket for too long - (and we didn't even put a bubbler in) - I assume they died from lack of oxygen. Anyway it's a routine we've done for over a year now with only the occasional problem - yesterday being one of those days.
I did the water change for the smaller tank last Sunday night. All was well. Tank clouded up as usual and then got crystal clear an hour or two later. I was in pain and misery due to my sciatica but it was done. Monday I had a Dr's appt and ran a couple of errands. Wish the Dr was the type that handles
sciatica but she isn't.
On Tuesday I did the water change on the big tank- by then a some water had evaporated from the smaller tank so I had aa little leftover water so I poured in about 1 gallon to top it off and it clouded up the smaller tank - I thought that was a little strange given the water ratio, one gallon shouldn't have clouded up the tank that bad - but the Neutral Regulator always turns the water in the tank white so I figured it would clear up in a couple hours - I went to bed.
Wednesday I woke up to a horrible smell. It was like 10 dogs had pooped in my bedroom. I got up and the smell was coming from the smaller tank, which had cleared a little but was still pretty white in color - just taking a mental inventory and trying to see through the haze it seemed all the fish were still swimming and alive, but I thought maybe one of my GIANT DoJo's had passed away because no other fish would be big enough to raise that kind of stink. But I could clearly see all of the bigger fish, Now the big tank had the exact same type of water in it and it was cloudy for 1 hour and cleared up just fine and no smell, just like our tanks usually do. SOMETHING was different about that 1 gallon of water I poured into the smaller tank or something was different about my smaller tank.
So after having some coffee, some anti-nausea medicine and had taken all my pills and done my breathing treatments and fed the cat and fed all the feral cats outside - the whole time trying not to cry because I knew I HAD to do a water change immediately. I really thought about taking all the fish out for this one so I could remove all the water - but I couldn't even see all the fish clearly. I have no idea what they thought about it. So I removed about 80% of the water as quickly as I could - that's as far as I could go or I would have some really stressed fish. Right then one of my tetra's turned on her side dead. Then another, then another etc., until all 6 colored tetras took that moment to die together - so I'm really assuming chemistry is responsible since I didn't drop a brick in the tank to cause this or maybe mass hysterical suicide?. I removed the little dead tetra and did an inventory - every other fish that I have in that tank was still alive - BUT the one thing most of these fish have in common is that they use their swim bladder to breathe regular air - so they weren't entirely dependent on the water oxygen. I do have two types of fish that I don't know if they can breathe regular air or not, I have a Tomasi L188a Pleco (affectionally called "my favorite martian"), and I have 3 baby Bristlenose Lemon Pleco L-144 and I don't know if either of those species can breathe regular air. The rest of my fish are Dojo loaches and Dwarf Gourami - all of which can breath fresh air. So my thought at the moment was that the concentration of whatever was the problem was greatest at the bottom of the tank (or the tetra just died due to stress all at the same time) At the time I should have tested the water or at least taken out a large enough sample to test it later but I was just thinking of getting that tank filled back up. The smell was pretty much gone so that was reassuring. So I filled it back up, using the same prime and the same Neutral Regulator and it got cloudy again and today (Thursday and my Birthday) it's still cloudy but far better than it was. So the tank is still not behaving "normally" with that Neutral Regulator - we don't measure it out when we put it in the bucket but sprinkle some in the lid and when it looks like about 1/4 tsp. we stop - both my assistant and I bake a lot and easily visualize 1/4 tsp without measuring. That's enough to make the PH of that bucket 7.0 - I obviously put it in since the water was white. If I hadn't put prime in probably nothing would happen because the other 28 gallons of water DID have prime in it - but I'm sure I put prime in it too. Now it's 1:30 am Friday and you can really see the fish now but it's still pretty cloudy. Nobody else has died. Smell is normal. In my bigger tank - it's stayed clear the entire time and no fish have died.
Today I did take some measurements on the water in the smaller tank: Ammonia-0, Nitrite-0,Nitrates-10, PH 7.2 What WAS interesting was measuring the Ammonia. I'm using the standard API kit and you put 8 drops of stuff from 2 bottles and, at least for me it always turns a little bit yellow. Sometimes it's so close to the yellow on the card it's hard to tell but this time the water stayed COMPLETELY CLEAR I have NEVER seen that before so that's strange. The other thing is that I'm assuming that it was the 1 gallon of top-off water that caused the problem when the problem might have already been there but hadn't had time enough to develop the smell and everything. Whatever it is did react with the new water to make the entire tank cloudy - but to me it still points to that one bucket of water.
So can anybody solve this mystery? BTW Seachem's Neutral Regulator contains "Phosphate buffers and conditioning agents"
Picture taken about 1:45 am on Friday 1/22/2021
