Such A Thing As Over Oxygenation?

k9cop

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I was at my local fish store today to purchase a liquid test kit for my water. A couple of my fish have popeye and all of them in general just look bad. While I was getting me test kit I told the "aquatics specialist" what was going on. She told me to turn off my air pump since I only have a ten gallon tank. She said my fish were probably too oxygenated. Is there such a thing?

So I went home and tested my water with the following results; PH 7.6, Ammonia 5.0ppm, Nitrite 5.0ppm, and Nitrate about 10ppm. I think I have found the reason why my fish are not doing so hot. I did a 20% water change and added an emergency dose to clear up the ammonia and nitrite. By the way what is a good Nitrate level supposed to be at?
 
I was at my local fish store today to purchase a liquid test kit for my water. A couple of my fish have popeye and all of them in general just look bad. While I was getting me test kit I told the "aquatics specialist" what was going on. She told me to turn off my air pump since I only have a ten gallon tank. She said my fish were probably too oxygenated. Is there such a thing?

So I went home and tested my water with the following results; PH 7.6, Ammonia 5.0ppm, Nitrite 5.0ppm, and Nitrate about 10ppm. I think I have found the reason why my fish are not doing so hot. I did a 20% water change and added an emergency dose to clear up the ammonia and nitrite. By the way what is a good Nitrate level supposed to be at?

Nitrate is fine, but those ammonia and nitrite levels are your problem. It seems your tank hasn't fully cycled yet.
 
<50 nitrate is the general rule of thumb, and <20 for more sensitive fish and inverts. No such thing as over-oxygenating and I wouldn't shop at any store that tries to tell it's customers something as stupid as that...

The only way your air pump can affect your tank negatively is if you keep live plants, the surface aggitation will release all of the co2 in the water making co2 injection pointless.
 
Well, a blanket statement like "No such thing as over-oxygenating" just isn't true. Because it is possible. Just incredibly unlikely in a home aquarium.

In fact, an oxygen saturation of 105% is deadly for fish. But, like I said, it is practically impossible to do this at home.

The important concept here is one of equilibrium. The system, in this case the oxygen in the air and the oxygen in the water, will always tend toward the equilibrium point. Equilibrium is achieved when the sources and sinks of oxygen are balanced. The sources being oxygen from the air, and the sinks are the plants during the night and the fish. When these are in balance, the water holds a certain amount, called the equilibrium concentration or equilibrium point. Whenever the system is not at equilibrium, it will always tend toward equilibrium.

For example, if your water held less oxygen than the equilibrium point, oxygen would enter the water through the air-water interface until equilibrium was reached.

Now, another important fact is that this equilibrium point is temperature sensitive. Fish respire at different rates depending upon the temperature, and the water holds different amount of gases depending upon the temperature. And, liquid dissolves less gas as the liquid's temperature increases.

In this way, cool water at 100% equilibrium, if heated up quickly, could get to 105% equilibrium, the deadly point for fish.

The reason I say it is unlikely, is that oxygen transport at the surface is relatively rapid, especially with a filter return or air pump. It is very difficult to heat the water up quickly enough without allowing the re-equilibration that occurs.

This is why it is pretty much impossible to over-oxygenate your water in a home setting. You could even bubble pure oxygen into your tank, and it would not make a difference. The system always tends toward 100% equilibrium.

All that said, the lesson here is that that LFS is rather untrustworthy. And, the above posters are definately right. Both the ammonia and nitrite are at very dangerous levels. To help, immediately do a water change. Then, several hours later, do another one. In fact, so long as the temperature and hardness and pH of the replacement water is pretty close to tank water, you can do as large a % water change as you can handle, even 80-90%. Obviously one 80% water change lowers those 5.0's to 1.0's, a vast improvement. Or you could achieve roughly an 80% drop with 5 20% water changes. To be really safe, you need to keep doing waterchanges every few hours or at the minimum every day until the levels are at least as low as 1.0 ppm each. That is still not safe, as the levels need to be 0.0 in the long-term, but under 1.0 at least gives your fish a chance. Clean water = healthy fish, and lowering the pollution levels in your tank can only help increase the chances of your fish survivng pop-eye.
 
How can you get 105% saturation?? Surely 100% is the maximum.

Further, oxygen at high levels isnt just toxic to fish, but to all living aerobes - its why humans age - oxygen damages the cells over time.
 
oscar, did you read my post? I explained how it happens. You take cool water at 100% equilibrium and warm it up. Warmer liquid holds less gas, but that gas doesn't leave immediately, especially if you minimize surface disturbances. Then the now warmer water can achieve over 100% saturation. Thermodynamically, this is known as a meta-stable state.

Another example of a metastable state: You use a glass container with no imperfections (nicks or the like) to heat up water in the microwave. You can get that water over 100 deg C and it will remain a liquid. There were no nucleation sites for water vapor to form, to the system gets over 100 degrees and into the meta-stable state. There have been reports of people who have scalded themselves pretty bad by taking out their glass containers full of microwaved water and then the jarring of putting the glass on the counter was enough to push the system out of its meta-stable state into it stable state -- all water vapor. Those people were burned pretty bad when a face full of steam hit them.

The point is that is takes some pretty extraordinary circumstances to achieve these situations. Circumstances extraordinarily unlikely to happen in a home aquaria.
 

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