Contaminated City Water

[duanes]

Did you do a water change with the brown water?
When there is a main break, sometimes biofilm breaks off when the water is turned back on, this is brown but highly unlikely to kill your fish.
Before the water supplier is allowed to put the main back in service, tests must be done to determine if it's safe for "human" consumption. They must double dose the fixed area with chlorine to make sure their customers are safe from E coli or other contaminants.
The people who do this work are not bureaucrats, they are working people with the responsibility to keep an entire population of your city safe from disease, this sometimes puts them at odds with fish keepers.
If you did a water change with brown water, and didn't treat it for chlorine, this is not the city workers fault.

 

[Chris360]

Did you do a water change with the brown water?
When there is a main break, sometimes biofilm breaks off when the water is turned back on, this is brown but highly unlikely to kill your fish.
Before the water supplier is allowed to put the main back in service, tests must be done to determine if it's safe for "human" consumption. They must double dose the fixed area with chlorine to make sure their customers are safe from E coli or other contaminants.
The people who do this work are not bureaucrats, they are working people with the responsibility to keep an entire population of your city safe from disease, this sometimes puts them at odds with fish keepers.
If you did a water change with brown water, and didn't treat it for chlorine, this is not the city workers fault.

No, I didn't do a waterchange with brown water. I did a water change with contaminated water hence the reason I noticed my fish were sick. Then the water was shut off to fix whatever problems were at hand. Then thats when I came home and turned the water on and noticed it was brown. I let it run til it was no longer brown. If you would have read the thread I wasn't really pointing ang fingers, just *****ing about my very expensive dead fish.

 

[Rmelz]

My guess is the water wasn't contaminated before it was turned off. There was probably a water main break, and after the repair most places want you to boil the water for 24 hours after the repair has been made. I wonder if doing multiple major water changes didn't contribute to your problem.

 

[petspoiler]

IME when an order to boil water is needed, extra chemicals are immediately pumped into the water lines. They don't wait for notifications, repairs and brown water.
The chems are more likely to have killed your fish, than the original contaminants which can make people sick.
No way you could have known.
real unfortunate timing.
sorry for your losses.

 

[Chris360]

My guess is the water wasn't contaminated before it was turned off. There was probably a water main break, and after the repair most places want you to boil the water for 24 hours after the repair has been made. I wonder if doing multiple major water changes didn't contribute to your problem.

That is a possibility but I've been known to do multiple w/c and have yet to lose any fish til now.

 

[Chris360]

IME when an order to boil water is needed, extra chemicals are immediately pumped into the water lines. They don't wait for notifications, repairs and brown water.
The chems are more likely to have killed your fish, than the original contaminants which can make people sick.
No way you could have known.
real unfortunate timing.
sorry for your losses.

Thanks, yea its a no win situation but thank you for you concern.

 

[duanes]

As a microbiologist/chemist for a water producer, I was in charge of making sure over 1 million people were not sickened or die from water bourne disease. A contamination from a main break could do this. If I did not do my job, people got sick, or died and I went to jail, if that meant killing a few fish, that was the trade off.
As a fish keeper myself, I knew by disinfecting a main, my fish might die.....better than people sickened or dead.