FishProfiles.com Message Forums

If the lakes and streams, and in this case tropical waters, were loaded with the concoctions hobbyists put in their tanks, the amount of fish left for the trade would be diminished by eighty percent...

We'd have a tank with one fish in it.

But, you may say, there's always commercial producers willing to take up the slack, and indeed they do.

We all love a good environment, free of pesticides, mercury, poisonous fertilizers. The latter presently ruining the Florida Everglades and the creatures within.

The results of maintaining an environmentally perfect aquarium are astounding. If you've read my Water Quality series of articles in another Forum, you'd understand.

Binding Molecules...

Will tap water make your fish sick?? Will chlorine remover, overdosed, create an environmental disaster?? Will the chloramine tabs/liquid that remove chlorine and ammonia create a poisonous soup??

Chloramine/chlorine neutralizers seem to work. But remember, ammonia just doesn't disappear after dosing the tabs/liquid. Where does it go?? Nowhere.

It remains in your water but in an entirely different form. The ammonia, think of it in two distinct parts, one harmful, one neutral, is changed.

The harmful ammonia molecule is bound to the molecule in the preparation rendering it harmless. So they say.

The fact is it's all still in there, part of the tank water, being flushed through the fish, kidneys and all.

Add a combination of other concoctions to the mix like stress coat, anticeptics, antibiotics, ich meds, water clarifiers, pH reducers, dyes, parasite meds, and you have a solution that would make a Piranha puke.

NEXT: No wonder your fish are sick.

--garyroland.

[span class="edited"][Edited by garyroland 2004-08-04 10:42][/span]

Good show, old chap. . . Far too many hobbyists get sucked in by all the hype and corporate propaganda that seems to follow any water additive in fishkeeping.

Maybe we could start a fad. . . minimalist "zen" aquarium water. Just to make it flashy enough that it'll catch on.

Chloramine/chlorine neutralizers seem to work. But remember, ammonia just doesn't disappear after dosing the tabs/liquid. Where does it go?? Nowhere.

For some reason I guess I thought nitrifying bacteria converted it into less toxic nitrates, thereby removing it from the tank naturally.

You can age your water to remove the chlorine, but municipal water supplies began using chloramine as well, which does not dissipate from the water as easily, therefore letting it dissipate naturally is less effective.
At some time or another, most people will eventually have to add something to a tank besides fish, water, and food. It's the going overboard, like you mentioned, that is the culprit and root cause of so many problems.....playing yo-yo with ph up and down type products, ohhh the fish look lethargic maybe some antibiotics and antiseptics will help...and is that a piece of pooh or a worm? Better add some parasite cure too. Uh-oh, looks like it's worse, let me add some of this magic water treatment powder stuff.:%)
People that add too much junk to their tank more often than not do mean well...the ones that will add incompatible fish together because they think one of them is "lonely" and needs company (my wife is guilty of that), it's just that the ramifications aren't apparent to them. They percieve something as being wrong and try to fix it and often become frustrated and give up fishkeeping, feeling like failure fish murderers.

With all the crazy products out there, the bad advice, the miracle chemicals/laser lights, etc, it's no wonder that people new to the hobby are confused. It's up to forums like this one to help them wade through the BS, so let's help them and not ridicule them out of the hobby if at all possible.

Tests have shown the remaining ammonia after neutralizing seems to have an extended life...

Nitrifying bacteria may not have a taste for the altered ammonia, but there is a time frame involved for dissipation as a gas.

I have not studied the time frame.

--garyroland.

ammonia removers convert ammonia to a form which is indigestible by nitrifying bacteria, so it lurks around.

However, in PH of below 7, this process occurs naturally anyway, so it's effect on the physiology of the fish could be debated.

I'm not sure what by-products are produced bvy the reaction between declorinator (sodium thiosulphate) and chlorine. It would be interesting to find out!

-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

If I had room in this apartment, I would have a large drum with a powerhead churning the water to dissipate the chlorine/chloramine...and then a sumbersible pump to fill tanks with. At the moment, just lucky to have room for the tanks though, hehe.

I've been using Seachem's Prime but I don't really "like" any of the dechlorinating products because of all the bells and whistles that are thrown in there. Slime coating, removal of ammonia, detoxification of nitrites/nitrates, some have a buffer, some have natural herbal stress-ease stuff......it's becoming increasingly hard to avoid the stuff. I worry that the tap water treatments that remove nitrates and neutralize heavy metals will mess with the potassium nitrate I have to add to tank, and the trace ferts which I add. Of all the plant gurus I speak to, none have had an issue with it but it still makes me nervous.

I had not heard of the tests that may indicate ammonia that has been "bonded" to has an extended life, but it would make sense. Ammonia removers that make it INDIGESTABLE to nitrifying bacteria I have not heard of. The seachem's Prime I use says " converts ammonia into a safe, non-toxic form that is readily removed by the tank's biofilter." I don't use the stuff to remove ammonia, but I would think if your statement was true there would be lawsuits flying, or at the very least someone would have mentioned that xxxxx product killed off their biological filter.

At any rate, it's hard finding good products without side-effects. Maybe that large drum will fit into a closet.

how would you know it had killed off your nitrifying bacteria if you were using it to control ammonia?

-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

Your Nitrate levels? Obviously you wouldn't be getting much of an increase of nitrate if the ammonia was not being used by nitrifying bacteria.

but you would find it very difficult to see a discernible rise (which would tell you) unless you left the tank for weeks without a water change

-------------------------------------------------
I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

If every product that "removes ammonia" makes ammonia indigestible to your biofilter, killing your biofilter, I'm fairly certain that someone would have noticed by now. Maybe a few products do, I'll go along with that, but in general I think it would be a pretty bad practice to put " converts ammonia into a safe, non-toxic form that is readily removed by the tank's biofilter." on the side of a bottle of stuff that kills the bacteria in your biofilter.

Once you stopped using the product, you would probably notice your tank cycling..ammonia and nitrite spikes, etc. I think that would be a pretty good indicator that the ammonia remover product is making the ammonia indigestible to the biofilter bacteria.. Like I said, I've used Seachem's Prime off and on to remove chlorine. It also removes chloramine, ammonia, and detoxifies nitrite ( I don't have a registerable amount in my tanks) and nitrate ( 15ppm is the highest I have in any of my tanks). I don't need it to do all that stuff but it does...I just buy it because it's concentrated.. a capful treats 50 gallons instead of 5 gallons or something. I'm pretty sure that I would have noticed the ammonia and nitrite spikes along with floating fish during the times I don't use it if it indeed made the ammonia indigestible, because the cessation of using the product would mean cessation of ammonia removal if what you say is true.

"The ammonia doesn't really go anywhere it stays in the tank"...until consumed as a food source...

Some may think the ammonia becomes totally diluted immediately by the "remover", thus the reason for my statement.

Whether the bio filter (bacteria) recognize the converted ammonia as an unchanged food source can only be proven by a test within two or three days after dosing and only if a test was done before the eliminator was dosed.

There have been cases where ammonia had built up in tanks over time, perhaps an indicator that the bio filter was not effective in removing the altered ammonia entirely.

Speculation.

--garyroland.



[span class="edited"][Edited by garyroland 2004-08-09 18:48][/span]

Such as someone trying to raise an oscar in a 20 gallon tank with an aquaclear 200.. Or a tank with massive overcrowding.. The biological filter would not be able to handle the bioload effectively.

The Amazon Nut...