Thoughts on a Super Red Sev Death

[Mythic Figment]

Completely unnecessary unless the OP enjoys doing water changes. Based on the water perams originally posted, 30% weekly is good. By doing multiple water changes a week, you're actually causing more stress on the fish by constantly stirring up their environment - this is pretty basic.

Safe and Prime do not speed anything up - they detoxify through binding. See: Sodium thiosulfate. Understanding the nitrogen cycle has absolutely nothing to do with detoxifying nitrates (the nitrogen cycle is about converting nitrates). If you need proof, call Seachem.

Which is irrelevant to the original post, since his water is clearly from a different source

There's no such thing as access ammonia and nitrites in a system with sufficient bio media/ bio flow. That is NOT what water changes are for. and again, if you are changing water to remove these, you're wrong. And anyone who does water changes to "remove visible debris" is doing something else wrong, obviously.

Or we could get together on an MFK thread and talk about it

Its not basic because this is a complex hobby with lots of varying opinions and not a lot of fact. Water changes stress fish out, but so does a poor environment. Either way you look at it, the fish are going to get a little stress. And not every water change is stirring up the environment. I don't gravel vac my entire tank every time I do a change. I can put my vac in a corner and just remove water, so the stress on my fish is minimal.

Safe and Prime bind, allowing the bacteria to do their jobs more effectively. I call it speeding things up. And detoxifying nitrates is as simple as removing them, thus an understanding of the nitrogen cycle is necessary.

The point I was trying to make about my water is that everyone's water is different, so my point is not irrelevant. He needs to test his water thoroughly to see exactly what he is getting from the tap because there are so many different water sources and no two are exactly alike, so addressing issues they create is different for everyone.

I would agree with you that excess ammonia and nitrites in the system are not necessary to remove with sufficient media. However, not everyone has top of the line filtration and they can experience build ups in these levels if their filtration is not enough and/or if their tank is overstocked. So that CAN BE what water changes are for. You are thinking of just maintenance water changes while I am looking at the big picture, which is a very wide variety of water changing needs. I am not a very good live plant keeper. It's something I have been trying to get the hang of over the last few months, so I have some plants that die and leave debris in my tank that I vac out. So I am not doing something wrong where my water changes are concerned. I may be doing something wrong in my plant care, but not with my water. My point is there are various needs to do water changes, not just the three you mentioned. You may need to do it for just those three, but there are in fact a large number of other reasons.

Not everyone's experience is the same as yours. Not everyone does their care the way you do. And telling them they are wrong because you disagree doesn't make you right....or make people respect your opinion more.


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[flyingdog]

Is the general opinion that water changes stress the fish ?. I find my fish thrive after water changes often resulting in spawning and a bit of push and shove . I do 40 % weekly with my centrals with prepared water and they love it.

 

[Mythic Figment]

And just for giggles, here is the response directly from the Seachem website.

Q: How does Prime make a difference in reducing Nitrates?

"A: The detoxification of nitrite and nitrate by Prime (when used at elevated levels) is not well understood from a mechanistic standpoint. The most likely explanation is that the nitrite and nitrate is removed in a manner similar to the way ammonia is removed; i.e. it is bound and held in a inert state until such time that bacteria in the biological filter are able to take a hold of it, break it apart and use it. Two other possible scenarios are reduction to nitrogen (N2) gas or conversion into a benign organic nitrogen compound.
I wish we had some more "concrete" explanation, but the end result is the same, it does actually detoxify nitrite and nitrate. This was unexpected chemically and thus initially we were not even aware of this, however we received numerous reports from customers stating that when they overdosed with Prime they were able to reduce or eliminate the high death rates they experienced when their nitrite and nitrate levels were high. We have received enough reports to date to ensure that this is no fluke and is in fact a verifiable function of the product."

So they are saying they don't understand why it is happening for 100% certainty (I.e. "concrete") because they developed this product for use with ammonia, not nitrites or nitrates.

They do mention three possible explanations for this unforseen occurrence. Now I have been talking with my friend who has a PhD in organic chemistry and we had a bit of a debate about this paragraph. He tells me that the likely explanation is that the nitrites and nitrates are being bound in an inert state for bacterial consumption, this making it a simple case of the nitrogen cycle. Apparently the other two explanations are definitely possibly and would normally be very likely under universal circumstances. He is going to review the chemicals contained in both Prime and Safe to see if there is anything the oxygen molecules would leave the nitrogen for to create N2 gas. He tells me that at first glance, he can see nothing that would do this in the products, but that the possibility still exists if the water chemistry from the tap contains molecules that the oxygen would interact with. The other possibility of a nitrogen compound would also rely on tap water containing molecules for the oxygen molecules to leave the nitrogen molecules for and molecules other than stray nitrogen molecules for the nitrogen to interact with. Now here is the kicker. Because this product shows signs of detoxifying nitrates no matter what location in the world they exist in, the process of detoxifying nitrates does not depend on the water's chemical composition because water chemistry varies so much in all places around the world. So that basically makes the other two possibilities very slim. This means that nitrates being held in an inert state is the leading suspect of how nitrates are "detoxified" (and just to clarify that word for less science minded folks, my chemistry friend has confirmed to me that if something is being detoxified in a water environment, it is being removed from the water either as a gas or a solid). However, he has told me that none of these explanations can be 100% confirmed.


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[Mythic Figment]

Is the general opinion that water changes stress the fish ?. I find my fish thrive after water changes often resulting in spawning and a bit of push and shove . I do 40 % weekly with my centrals with prepared water and they love it.

See I get the same results. My fish don't seem to mind the water change at all. They do run from it as its moving through the tank, but when I leave the vac alone, they come over to it. And I too see a lot of displaying and energy in my fish after a water change. No breeding yet though.


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[RD.]

I use 1/4 teaspoon of Safe to treat 50 gallons. Your full teaspoon was enough to treat 200 gallons.

http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Safe.html

To remove…

Chlorine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 1625 L (450 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm).
Chloramine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 1250 L (300 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm

And that's at 4ppm, without knowing the OP's disinfectant residual coming out of their tap, no one here knows what amount of Safe the OP should or should not be using to treat their 125.

Where I live a level teaspoon of Safe will treat over 600 gallons of tap water.

Is the general opinion that water changes stress the fish ?

No.

 

[RD.]

Both Seachem Safe and Prime contain hydrosulphide salts which is a reducing agent. It reacts with chlorine compounds, which are oxidising agents. When there are no chlorine compounds left in the aquarium water they will find something else to reduce, such as 02. So being a known oxygen reducing agent one wants to ensure adequate 02 levels when using large amounts of reducing agents in their tank.

And no, feeding epsom soaked pellets will not raise the GH in a 125 gallon tank.

I personally don't think that the OP needs to change anything with regards to water values.

 

[sincebeen]

Is the general opinion that water changes stress the fish ?

Sorry, that's not what i meant, so I shouldn't have said that at all. I was talking about constantly stirring up the bottom with a gravel vac.

 

[Mythic Figment]

http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/Safe.html

To remove…

Chlorine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 1625 L (450 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm).
Chloramine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 1250 L (300 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm

And that's at 4ppm, without knowing the OP's disinfectant residual coming out of their tap, no one here knows what amount of Safe the OP should or should not be using to treat their 125.

Where I live a level teaspoon of Safe will treat over 600 gallons of tap water.

I am looking at the back of my bottle now and it says:

Chlorine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 750 L (200 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm).
Chloramine: use 5 g (1 tsp.*) to each 950 L (250 gallons*) of tap water (removes 4 ppm).

However, on my bottle the * means its in "US volume units", which makes sense because I believe (and may be wrong) that parts of Europe and in Canada, they use imperial gallons compared to a US gallon. The imperial is larger that the US by about 25%, so that would explain why the dosage for a "gallon" is so different, but it doesn't seem to account for the entire difference in dosage. Maybe they do something different to the water in the US than they do in Europe or Canada that would create a need for higher dosages in Europe and Canada.


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[RD.]

That would be incorrect - you're overthinking this.

Seachem recently changed the values, hence the reason the amounts are greater than what is on your label. The link that I gave was to the Seachem website, which is based in the USA, not the EU, and not Canada.

In fact, if you convert the metric values stated by Seachem on their website, it works out to be even greater than what they have rounded out in US gallons on their website.

1625 litres = 425 US gallons
1250 litres = 330 US gallons


........ and the vast majority of hobbyists do not have 4ppm of chlorine or chloramine coming out of their tap. In my case, it's half that amount year round @ 2 ppm or 2 mg/l chloramine. So in my case 1 level teaspoon of Safe would treat 660 US gallons of tap water.

 

[Mythic Figment]

That would be incorrect - you're overthinking this.

Seachem recently changed the values, hence the reason the amounts are greater than what is on your label. The link that I gave was to the Seachem website, which is based in the USA, not the EU, and not Canada.

In fact, if you convert the metric values stated by Seachem on their website, it works out to be even greater than what they have rounded out in US gallons on their website.

1625 litres = 425 US gallons
1250 litres = 330 US gallons


........ and the vast majority of hobbyists do not have 4ppm of chlorine or chloramine coming out of their tap. In my case, it's half that amount year round @ 2 ppm or 2 mg/l chloramine. So in my case 1 level teaspoon of Safe would treat 660 US gallons of tap water.

Ah. That would make sense then.

My water fluxes just a bit. It's 2.1 ppm in the summer and 2.6 ppm in the winter.

Thanks for letting me know of the change. I will be adjusting my dosage to compensate for the new info.


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