Water chem/bio opinions please

[keman]

I'll start by saying that I have been into fish keeping for a long time. (as in 40 years)

I had my 125 tank established and was slowly stocking it when our power went out for just over eight hours. I didn't know it at the time, but the outage was enough to allow a bio die off that I did not catch until we were losing the first rope fish. (I have other threads on that)

Here's the thing.
When we first cought the ammonia spike, we did emergency water changes and I cleaned the filter (in fish water from another tank). I know that dead bio can poison the tank as well. I then pulled media from several of our well established tanks. I even added back in some of the filter tea from rinsing the media out of established filters in another bucket of fish water. I have used filter tea to kick start new media many times in the past. It's kinda gross and nasty, but it works. (just make sure you pour it into the input side of the filter so it doesn't get pumped right into the tank.)

Testing the water twice daily..

This morning, Ammonia is showing a drop from yesterday, zero Nitrite, zero nitrate...

Then I get this tonight... Ammonia still slowly dropping, zero Nitrite, and a trace of nitrate. Shouldn't it be the other way round? This test kit is only a few months old, and gets consistent results with the other tanks in the house. Ammonia slipping slowly down could also be because we have removed and/or lost some fish from this tank. But I never got a nitrite reading at all, and test often enough that I could not have "missed it".

Any thoughts? When cycling a tank, I have always seen the Ammonia, then Nitrite, then Nitrate. Did my filter media swap and filter tea actually work better than I have ever had it work before? I have a doubt... Either way, I will not be adding new fish to this tank till I see stable readings for a month, then I will ad slowly so as to not freak out the balance.

 

[dleblanc]

I recently had two heater failures, and it had the same pattern - ammonia spike (big time), expected to see nitrite spike follow, but did not. There's two different groups of bacteria that do the NH3->NO2 conversion and the NO2 to NO3. I think the second group is more robust, and probably didn't die.

I found Purigen very useful at helping the ammonia to abate, and of course lots of water changes.

The second thing to look out for that I ran into, and maybe you will not, is that I had a bunch of now dead stuff in the substrate. It was causing a large oxygen demand, and the tank was running low oxygen. This didn't bother the tetras, so I thought the tank had restabilized, but when I introduced discus, I started having a bunch of problems, and lost some of them. I put a lot of bubblers in, and it fixed that. It is possible the tank will want more air for some time, but your problem is different than mine.

 

[keman]

Air is no problem, this tank has a six foot long bubble wall powered by a big air pump.
Have not tested yet this morning, as I am out of nitrate solution (tested all seven tanks and ran out)

I will be testing them again tonight.

Thanks for the input. I have been doing this for most of my life and had never seen a cycle "skip" the nitrite...

 

[ShortyKiloGyrl]

I found out the hard way. Nitrate test bottles separate and the chemicals stick to the inside of the bottle. I was advised by a fish keeper of many years to shake the bottles for 2 mins before even testing. Then follow the directions. Maybe since you are testing more frequently more the the chemicals are releasing from the side of the bottle giving you a more accurate nitrate reading? Just an idea. I was getting poor results from this issue in the past, so just a thought.

 

[Cory]

Air is no problem, this tank has a six foot long bubble wall powered by a big air pump.

I realize you say this. But that doesn't mean dissolved o2 is at correct levels. David actually opened my eyes to this when he brought his Dissolved oxygen Meter to my shop and tested some tanks. Now for a hobbyist it's hard to test, but I wouldn't be so swift to just rule it out either.

Here is a marine article I've been reading and trying to find more info on. But basically airstones etc seem to have very minimal effects on larger tanks compared to smaller tanks.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-08/eb/index.php

 

[dleblanc]

It also has a lot to do with the size of the bubbles. A tank that was low in DO at the shop has two bubble filters, but the bubbles were huge. If you have small bubbles, there's a lot more surface area to do the transfer.

Maybe you won't have a problem with oxygen, though - I had a bunch of worms, etc that had taken up residence in the substrate, and the decomposition was consuming a lot of air.

My experiments with the DO meter have been really interesting - almost every tank has surprised me. Some were high that I didn't expect to be high, others lower than I would have thought. For example, a heavily planted 20 with a low fish load (though a bunch of snails) was running roughly 30% saturation.

When my heater disaster happened, I was expecting huge nitrite spike, but didn't get it. So I think a normal tank cycle where you have to re-establish everything will behave differently than if something causes the ammonia consumers to die off.

 

[keman]

The bubble wall in this tank is all very tiny bubbles and LOTS of them.

OK, it has gone WAY beyond my ability to figure out on my own...

I tested the tank this AM and had an ammonia reading of .5ppm. I got home tonight just after 6pm and the tank has gone cloudy white. Ran all the tests (picked up a new ammonia test kit, and a new nitrate test kit)

Ammonia is OFF THE SCALE! I have never seen a color like this from an ammonia test, so logically I tested again with the new kit... HOLY CRAP... Ever seen ammonia results turn dark blue green/black??? 5ml tube, eight drops from bottle one, shake, eight drops from bottle two, shake... by the time I had shook the tube for a few seconds it was dark green. In five munutes it was WAY darker than the "card" even had a color to compare.

PANIC MODE!!! double nets, every fish is out of the tank and safely in other well established tanks that will be watched VERY carefully.

What next? HELP. I need advice....

100% water change and sand wash?
Let it run with no fish and watch the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate cycle to see if it resumes normally?
Take the tank out back, fill it with high octane and shoot it with a flare?

Now that it has no fish in it, I have all the time in the world to let it do it's thing...

I really trust all of you and need the input.

 

[keman]

Did I mention... HOLY CRAP??...!!...???




Please...?! I really am beyond wit. I have been managing tanks for forty years and never seen this.

 

[Cory]

First if your ammonia is really that high, it has nuked all your beneficial bacteria, so letting it sit and do it's thing will take about forever.

I'd say first thing first would be getting it to a manageable level. being 0.5ppm or something like that. With ammonia being that high can you smell it vs an established tank?

 

[keman]

The good news is that we only lost one more critter (albino Pleco) in this, and have moved all the others to safe tanks.

 

[keman]

First if your ammonia is really that high, it has nuked all your beneficial bacteria, so letting it sit and do it's thing will take about forever.

I'd say first thing first would be getting it to a manageable level. being 0.5ppm or something like that. With ammonia being that high can you smell it vs an established tank?

I don't smell ammonia, but I did test three times with separate kits and got the same results all three times. That's why it seem so "off" to me. I have never seen a tank do this.

I am still thinking a complete water change and sand wash is in order. Should I sanitize the filter media and just start over since there are no longer fish to worry about?

 

[Cory]

Everyone jumps to the just start over method. I personally would rather try and figure out where it's going wrong.

I realize you had a power outage. But something caused ammonia to go from 0.5 to off the chart today. Is it something in the substrate? Is it the canister etc. Some things to test would be putting a cup of sand in a glass of water from another tank. Test the water tonight. Then test it in the morning, then test it when home from work.

I've had people have problems with play sand etc doing it on the cheap, the killed off whole fish rooms before they identified it as bad sand etc.

 

[dleblanc]

Wow - was this a canister filter, or a sump?

Mine was bad - maybe 4 ppm, which is still pretty atrocious. I wouldn't blame you if you just wanted to pave it and start it completely over. I think I'd either do that, or put Purigen in the filter, and do as close to 100% water change as I could manage, then see if I could get it to cycle.

Glad your fish (mostly) lived through it, surprised that they did.

 

[keman]

I am pretty surprised anything survived too. The sand is good quality black sand and has been in this tank through the previous owner for three years. The filter is an oddysea 11i canister. I used a combination of new and established media in the filter when it was new, and have added more established media to it as problems started. I have turned on the sterilizer in the filter. Last time I had the filter open, I noticed there was a mildew smell, so I took out most of the media that had been in there and replaced it with media from other established filters in the house.

Could massive die off of the bio create more ammonia?

As it sits this morning, there are no fish in the tank, ammonia still way beyond the chart (kinda blue black in the test tube.) Nitrate reading is still low, no nitrite at all showing. So far, I have not started changing water or media out.

 

[KaraWolf]

yes if all your bacteria died off they would be putting off lots of ammonia

 

[dleblanc]

You get ammonia from decomposition of protein. I'm not sure what's still in there that's providing that much mass to decompose. At this point, it certainly isn't your filter. I'm thinking of this two ways - one is that I've never seen anything like this, what a neat science experiment. Going that direction, just change all the water, see how many water changes it takes to get down to something reasonable, and wait for the tank to recycle. The second is boy what a mess, let's take it apart, wash or replace the substrate - I'd be afraid to sterilize it, put it back together, treat it like a new tank.

I'll be interested to see how it works out, still astonished that a power loss for that short a period caused this much of a disaster. It has me thinking harder about putting in a battery backup system with an inverter.

 

[Cory]

It only takes like 3 minutes of no flow through a canister filter to be deadly really. Can be less if it was really dirty too.

 

[keman]

Three minutes! holy crap. They were down this last outage for just under two hours. We have the generator repaired and ready to go this last time, it just took me a bit to get home once Katie called me. Next time she will be able to handle it since she knows how to run things now. Crazy.

For now, the 125 is dead. I am going to let it run for a few days as an experiment to see what it does, then I may do a complete sand wash and filter media replacement and start the cycle from new/clean materials.

 

[dleblanc]

Along the lines of experiment, try changing a lot of the water, test the ammonia. Wait some time, then test it again. If it comes back up, then the only source of it that I can think of would be the substrate. If it stays steady or drops, then that makes me think it might recover over time.

 

[hose91]

It only takes like 3 minutes of no flow through a canister filter to be deadly really. Can be less if it was really dirty too.

Huh. Don't mean to hijack, but...Do you have any more details on this, Cory? I run 2 Eheim 2217's on a 75G tank, and shut them off when I do water changes weekly. They're generally off for about 20-30 minutes, but sometimes longer if I'm netting out fish or rescaping or such. I usually clean them every 90 days or so on a rotating schedule, so I open one of the two every 45 days or so. I've eased off on my testing regime just a little, so I don't have any recent numbers, but I've obviously not faced anything like what Keman has been suffering through and tank has been up and running now since late April. Have I just been lucky? Is there a difference between a power outage and just shutting off the canisters that I'm not seeing? Any suggestions on how to avoid bacteria die off in a filter if you need it off for more than 3 minutes?

Thanks for the time!