New fish died in 2 hours

[koltsixx]

Gas, hand lotion, soap residue, and/or? etc transfered from someones hands to the surface of a bag could potentially create toxic conditions in a tank. Add to that fish who were already most likely suffering from exposure to a strong dose of ammonia (see link above) and voila, the perfect storm was just created.

Seems more plausible to me than the OP's water supply suddenly going sideways, but of course that too is also a possibility.

Are you looking for any opportunity to counter any post I make?lol Anyway I again thank you for providing some info. that I had not been aware of. I myself have only lost a fish once during acclimation that I can recall and it was from a local LFS less then 2 miles away despite doing it poorly all this time. Any fish I ever lost on a shipment was DOA and even then I've been lucky I believe it's only been three thus far(knock on wood).

I will point out I wasn't discounting the OP's guess as to the cause just expressing my own belief. It's why I suggested asking the vendors if this was a issue they had others from the meet mention. I imagine if the perfect storm was created by someone polluting the bags there would be many others who had fish suffer the same fate and the Op would be entitled to compensation for the loss, so it would be only logical for the OP to contact the vendors.

 

[RD.]

Are you looking for any opportunity to counter any post I make?

Just to put your mind at ease, Kolt, when I hit the submit button your post wasn't even visible on my screen, until after the page reloaded.

FYI - not everyone floats bags when they bring them home, hence not everyone would necessarily experience what the OP did. That, and the fact that possibly one person may have contaminated a bag with something on their hands, does not equate to them contaminating every bag at the auction, or even more than one bag that they touched.

Again, Miles sticky explains the potential when one floats bags, and then adds water to that open bag. The bag itself may have simply been the icing on the cake.

I guess we will never know?

 

[koltsixx]

Just to put your mind at ease, Kolt, when I hit the submit button your post wasn't even visible on my screen, until after the page reloaded.

FYI - not everyone floats bags when they bring them home, hence not everyone would necessarily experience what the OP did. That, and the fact that possibly one person may have contaminated a bag with something on their hands, does not equate to them contaminating every bag at the auction, or even more than one bag that they touched.

Again, Miles sticky explains the potential when one floats bags, and then adds water to that open bag. The bag itself may have simply been the icing on the cake.

I guess we will never know?

Lol! I was teasing because I barely post and when I do you're there to counter me lately. It's only happened twice so far so believe it or not I wasn't getting paranoid yet, just making fun of a coincidence. Though it is interesting to note in both instances you did specifically reference my posts and no one else.

I am aware that not everyone floats there bags so not sure why the FYI? That doesn't change the fact that many do and that many would suffer the same issue if there was contamination. As for the likely hood that a person with contaminated hands touched only three bags from three different vendors that only coincidentally affected the OP's fish well call my naive but I don't think that's highly likely but that's just my opinion.

As I said I appreciated the new knowledge and wasn't being sarcastic, even when I expressed myself having poorly acclimated fish thus far.

 

[RD.]

Actually it does seem that paranoia might be taking over, as my initial comment in this discussion was in direct reference to the OP's comments. (floating bags, and ammonia toxicity)


The FYI was simply placed there as a reminder, and even if every single person that came home from that auction floated their bags, the contamination could have come from one lone individual, only touching one particular bag, such as someone interested in some juvie BN's. Right? You're assuming if one bag is contaminated, then many bags would have been contaminated, which isn't necessarily true.

Contamination from bags is not as out there in left field as some may think, including cross contamination of various pathogens and bacteria.

The OP can certainly call & ask around, same as he can about the local tap water conditions in his area, but typically what you will usually find at the other end is someone who is not going to admit any wrong doing. At least not when money is invloved.

 

[bbortko]

I don't know what you mean by "gas" and if this was the case I imagine there'd be many complaints being made at the vendors from others that got fish at the meet. Have you called the vendors to see if your issue was unique or not?

As far as your issue I have to say I've had water bad at the tap and I'm leaning toward that as the cause. There's many reasons water can be bad from the tap and I've had fish gasping or stressed after a water change just to find the new clean water parameters where horrible. Line work and other construction as well as just time and a whole slew of other reasons can release previously undetected contaminants into the water. It's not a common occurrence but it does happen. I'm sure there's been times you've drank water and thought hmmm, tastes kind of metallic today or doesn't taste right. I know I have and I live in NYC who supposedly has some of the best drinking water in the country. Since having issues after water changes I now test the tank water before the change, trying to keep track of the consistency in it's degradation in quality; looking for possible issues and the tap water itself before I do the change.

I filled the tank while I had my python out for water changes and had no issues in the other 4 tanks but those were 50% changes so if it was the tap water toxicity would have been half the amount and possibly below any threshold.

This is one of the reasons why I never float bags, especially from unknown sources such as at an auction. While I would also suspect toxicity from something, your acclimation routine put all of your fish at risk of ammonia toxicity as well, especially fish from an auction that were most likely in those bags for several hrs before you got them home & floated those bags, and then added new water over a period of time. In the following sticky Miles explains what the result of that can be, and why.

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?5350-Acclimating-LARGE-Fish


I've never floated a bag in my life, and have always used the drop & plop method described in that link, including with numerous wild fish, and fish flown in from overseas. Never once lost a fish, or experienced any stress beyond what one would typically expect from a new fish being acclimated to a new environment. The only parameter one truly needs to be concerned with are TDS values, everything else is generally a non issue.

Done floating for now, may still acclimate but in a pitcher or bucket.

The only vendor's name I remember was for the psittacus which I preordered so it was never on a table and the least likely to have had a problem. I could try contacting the club to see if they heard anything but that may be a long shot since they are not the vendors.

 

[RD.]

I filled the tank while I had my python out for water changes and had no issues in the other 4 tanks but those were 50% changes so if it was the tap water toxicity would have been half the amount and possibly below any threshold.

With that info, personally I think that it's fairly safe to remove the local water supply as the issue. Even if the other fish didn't outright die, I'm thinking that at the least you would have noticed some signs of stress in the other 4 tanks.

It's a bummer when stuff like this happens, especially when you will most likely never know for certain exactly what happened. One thing about this hobby, it's a never ending learning curve.

 

[golcondorus]

I agree with RD. The rise in temperature over an hour could have turned the ammonia in the bag deadly


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