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for whatever reason, we did a water change yesterday and wound up with an ammonia spike (1ppm >:/) both of my L239's died. everyone was fine immediately after the water change, so i thought nothing about turning off the light and going to bed.

it was really hot and my bf and i werent sleeping well. bf got up to get some water and happened to look at the tanks at 1am. he noticed EVERYONE was gasping. he turned on the lights and got me out of bed. i tested the water and found the ammonia spike.

im really peaved. it seems our tap water is registering a 1ppm ammonia reading as well (blech). we did water changes on 2 other tanks and they are reading high ammonia as well. thankfully, the fish in the other two tanks dont appear to be fazed. we lost a rummynose tetra in the tank with the L239's but that seems to be it for fish mortality.

i think the moral to this story is to never let your guard down. always check the water before turning the lights out :/

Sorry to hear that - you'd done so well so far with them (even if that was a struggle)...

So, it sounds like your local water is high in ammonia - it is possibly that they treated it with Chloramine, so that may have something to do with it.

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Mats

you dont use the water treatment on your tap water? I use API's stress coat+, removes ammonia and chlorine from tap water

i ALWAYS use prime. removes chlorine and chloramines. it also is supposed to lock ammonia in a non toxic state. but if the water company mucked with the water chemistry, it may take more prime to detoxify the water. time to let water sit overnight before doing water changes again. this is the second time this has happened.

im super mad i lost my two blues.

omg, i am so sorry, not Vincent and rachel!

I have had friends who lost whole tanks of fish after a water change only to find out the city water system had a glitch that day. Only saving them from massively adding more Prime at first signs of struggle and then only saving some fish. My one friend lost whole tanks in Texas the beginning of this summer.

Once it was realized what was going on she dumped double or more dose of Prime and saved some.

I am really sorry for your loss, he was the most beautiful pl*co I have ever seen. IMHO

((hugs))

p.s. she stores water now to allow it to gas off or whatever, but I cannot imagine how you can do that with alot of tanks running.

You really worked hard with Vincent and I am sorry for your loss.

thanks everyone for your sympathy. ive been monitoring my tank all day today watching the ammonia level drop (whew). it was 1ppm at 1am, .5ppm at 7am, and just a trace (less than .25ppm) at 1pm. we will be letting water sit overnight before water changes until the ammonia disappears from the tap.

anyone want to donate to a fund to buy me more L239 plecos? (im kidding, though this would be really nice)

sorry to hear about that.
some of my friends hu owns a local fish store boils water first and once it cools down she gets the purifier and adds small drops.
she says its god because it removes most germs and such and the purifier is just a back up and after visiting her store alot of times, all these fish a very healthy.

uh, here in the us, unless there has been a disaster, generally its not necessary to take water purification quite that far. nor do i have time/energy to boil water for a dozen tanks ;P (smallest is 25 gallons; largest right now is 100). great idea, but not practical for lots of huge tanks in a house with a tiny kitchen.

DJ-don wrote:sorry to hear about that.
some of my friends hu owns a local fish store boils water first and once it cools down she gets the purifier and adds small drops.
she says its god because it removes most germs and such and the purifier is just a back up and after visiting her store alot of times, all these fish a very healthy.

Yeah, that would work - does anyone know how long it takes to boil and then cool 200 liters in one go? Or even a 200 liter pot? ;) No? Thought so. I'll stick with my RO system, I think.

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Mats

Maybe go shopping and get 50 kettles. If you get that many they might give you a discount.

Although I wonder what the electricity bill of using 50+ extra kettles several times a month is...

Well, water requires 4.2J/k for each degree of heating. Say my tap-water is 15'C, and 200 kg of water, we get:
85 * 4.2 * 200J = 1700 * 4.2 * 1000 = 71400KJ. 1KWh = 3.6MJ -> 19.8KWh. Per week. So for a year, it uses 52 * 19.8KWh = 1MWh. That's 1000 units of electricity, at about 10 p per unit -> 100 pounds. Not that bad actually.

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Mats

oi. my landlord pays for the water here (we've double checked about all of the fishtanks) and i still think hed be mad if he had to pay for all of that...

its really handy though boiling the water i dont hav that many tanks and there really small. around 25-40 gallon tanks. i actually dont know how my friend can boil so much water. i geuss she only does that with the display tanks which still a re pretty big.......