Store water killed my fish

[chris510]

Is it really ok though ?
It won’t hurt you or your friends . But as soon as your friends learn you just peed in the pool , you no longer have friends swimming with you .
Moral of the story … please don’t pee in the pool !

It's like when you're swimming with your toddler and ask her, do you need to the bathroom? and she replies, I already did.

 

[Rmckoy]

It's like when you're swimming with your toddler and ask her, do you need to the bathroom? and she replies, I already did.

It’s almost instantly as soon as they jumk
Into the water the urge to urinate is instantaneous .Shortly after getting in the water she would always chuckle and laugh with “ I peed in the water”

 

[Rmckoy]

Hi all
Thanks so much for the feedback! I’m responding to as many of the questions as I can.
- Tank is 40 gal cube, Aquatop. 6 months old. I’ve kept ~4 fish and a cleaner shrimp and snails. During this time, parameters and livestock did ok. Previously, I only had 1 death and 1 jumper.
- New fish came in bag the size of a small shopping bag (1 pint?).
- Oh, I also bought an Indo Gold Torch that day (Black Friday sale)
- LFS told me to get 20lbs sand originally. And in a cube, it’s about 2 inch high. I did a water change the morning of getting new fish. Perhaps I stirred up some trapped chemicals from the sand?
- Before adding new fish, none of the previous ones showed any odd behavior.
- When adding new fish, my 6 line Wrasse did chase them around. So, the two new guys did show some panic. Later, they hid out in their own corners. For the 4 new and old ones, they died with 5 days.
- I floated the bag for about 2 hours, then poured it in. No quarantine, no drip. I did not test their water. But I did test my parameters after, and the only thing that went up was the nitrate to 50ppm.

- Before and after params based on Saltmaster test kit and some strips. Only thing increased was Nitrate (20 to 50). Hm, I just realized now that the copper stayed the same afterwards…

Ammonium - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 20 —> 50
Salinity - 1.026
PH - 7.8
Phosphate - .25
Iron - 0
Copper - 0
Chlorine - 0

I'm still pretty new to this. So not sure what other signs to look for. Thanks again.

In a 40 gal cube imagine ….
if the nitrates went up 30ppm from adding a pint of water ?
What was the nitrate level in that fish bag ?
I don’t think it’s not possible and believe testing error …

the nitrates would have be extremely high and diluted in 40 gals of tank water to increase 30ppm
I believe there are other issues not yet determined

 

[Sharkbait19]

Sounds more like a disease issue to me. This is always a concern when adding fish that have not been quarantined. If something in the water was that bad, the fish shouldn’t have even been alive by the time of purchase.

 

[jabberwock]

In a 40 gal cube imagine ….
if the nitrates went up 30ppm from adding a pint of water ?
What was the nitrate level in that fish bag ?
I don’t think it’s not possible and believe testing error …

the nitrates would have be extremely high and diluted in 40 gals of tank water to increase 30ppm
I believe there are other issues not yet determined

Agree, subjective test is easy to misread.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

I'll be the "bad" guy here.
First never put anything into your system that you have not tested yourself.

Second odds are this store water did not kill your stuff. Correlation does not equal causation; this is a common Trope in our Hobby. Find someone to blame and run with it. This will not help you become a better reefer. Taking the time to understand what actually happened will serve you far better than placing blame on that one thing that you did.

Devil's Advocate.

You are absolutely correct in that we should never put outside water into our systems.

With that being said, no shop should be running copper in their systems and not disclosing it to customers.

If they are running a full dose of copper, that's one thing. Since (all) shops I know of that run copper, None of them run it at therapeutic levels, I'll assume this one does also.

Who's to say they also didn't send the fish home at 1.019 without telling in addition to copper? This could be an immediate death point did the new fish. So far as the old stock, whatever was attempting to be hidden by copper, very well could have come in and wiped out everything else.

There are too many unknowns here, but I'd still say something shady is afoot.

This is yet another case study for quarantine.

 

[chris510]

In a 40 gal cube imagine ….
if the nitrates went up 30ppm from adding a pint of water ?
What was the nitrate level in that fish bag ?
I don’t think it’s not possible and believe testing error …

the nitrates would have be extremely high and diluted in 40 gals of tank water to increase 30ppm
I believe there are other issues not yet determined

It was two fish and a gold torch, so 3 small bags. sorry, I can't gauge how big, but it's basically the normally bag size you get with a new fish. Total prob a gallon of water. I didn't test nitrate of the LFS water, but will from now on!! I have the crappy saltmaster test kit, and a test strip. both aligned on numbers. I think it's more of a disease than anything, like someone else said. Seems odd that shrimp died and copper stayed at zero.

Oh, I also dosed iodide sometimes because I had a frog spawn. I followed instructions. About a capful every week or so. I guess I need test strips for that if I'm going to dose.

 

[chris510]

Sounds more like a disease issue to me. This is always a concern when adding fish that have not been quarantined. If something in the water was that bad, the fish shouldn’t have even been alive by the time of purchase.

That sounds most likely now, as different things died. Now the soft coral doesn't look healthy. I'll just keep doing water changes, changing filters and hope my tank recovers. The two remaining clowns and a watchman goby are ok. but he's lonely now that the tiger pistol shrimp died =(

 

[chris510]

Devil's Advocate.

You are absolutely correct in that we should never put outside water into our systems.

With that being said, no shop should be running copper in their systems and not disclosing it to customers.

If they are running a full dose of copper, that's one thing. Since (all) shops I know of that run copper, None of them run it at therapeutic levels, I'll assume this one does also.

Who's to say they also didn't send the fish home at 1.019 without telling in addition to copper? This could be an immediate death point did the new fish. So far as the old stock, whatever was attempting to be hidden by copper, very well could have come in and wiped out everything else.

There are too many unknowns here, but I'd still say something shady is afoot.

This is yet another case study for quarantine.

Do you have a good link or recommendation for quarantine tank? I'm still a beginner and not ready to handle maintaining two tanks. I think I could just use a 5 gallon with pump, filter and heater? Do I need a bubbler? Do I need to soak some media for bacteria and transfer that to the QT?

What do you mean by 1.019? Salinity? My tank is 1.025.

 

[chris510]

This forum is a lot nicer than the Facebook groups I'm in. Lol. They bash on you even though the title of the forum has "..beginners" in it.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Do you have a good link or recommendation for quarantine tank? I'm still a beginner and not ready to handle maintaining two tanks. I think I could just use a 5 gallon with pump, filter and heater? Do I need a bubbler? Do I need to soak some media for bacteria and transfer that to the QT?

What do you mean by 1.019? Salinity? My tank is 1.025.

He means the store water at 1.019 - that big swing to 1.025 can be deadly.
If inverts are dying now, check your params again. A disease would strictly affect fish.

 

[kevgib67]

This forum is a lot nicer than the Facebook groups I'm in. Lol. They bash on you even though the title of the forum has "..beginners" in it.

That’s what we are here for. Ee were all at the same point as you at one time. After you get this straightened out and after some time and learning you’ll be on here helping a beginner. Good luck.