Orangehead tapajos dying after water change

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I use anti-chlorine. Usually my water changes are about 40% -50% at a time. Once a week. The tank has few plants, a driftwood and sea sand at the bottom. I'll do a ph test of this tank in a little while.

I have a few more tanks of the same size (65g). One has 6 Channa pleuros in it. Another one had 14 small pBass in it (for 3 months, they've moved to a bigger one since then).
The 65g tank with tapajos was a mixed tank always. They've had green terrors, tetras, smaller pBass with them from time to time. the water change method on these tanks has been the same. Only tapajos got affected though.

Yeah, doing smaller water changes more frequently would make it safer too.
 
Simple anti-chlorine won't work on water that is also treated with chlorAmines, there is a difference between them.
Also, whereas chlorine will dissipate after water sits in barrels for a while, chlorAmines won't. that must be treated to be safe for fish.
Duanes is knowledgeable about some of these issues.
For water changes, I use a hose made to be safe for drinking water. just to be safe.
 
petspoiler said:
Simple anti-chlorine won't work on water that is also treated with chlorAmines, there is a difference between them.
Also, whereas chlorine will dissipate after water sits in barrels for a while, chlorAmines won't. that must be treated to be safe for fish.
Duanes is knowledgeable about some of these issues.
For water changes, I use a hose made to be safe for drinking water. just to be safe.
Click to expand...

It removes chloramines as well.

Sent from my SM-N900V using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
If you have chloramines, which will show up when you test your tap water for ammonia, then you need a water conditioner to break the chloramine bond and temporarily detoxify the ammonia.

How much chlorine/chloramines does anti-chlorine remove? It's possible the amount of chlorine/chloramine being used in the tap water is too much for anti-chlorine.
 
It removes chloramines as well.
Click to expand...

Actually no, it doesn't. The Anti-Chlorine sold in the Sri Lanka market is a form of sodium thiosulfate, which will only affect chlorine, not ammonia.

Vulgarity checker won't let me post the link, but here's the write up on ant-chlorine sold by a LFS in Punjab. I assume this is the same brand the OP who resides in Sri Lanka is using.

Anti-chlorine

Features:It is economical to use, safe and non-toxic to aquarium plants and fish even when used in excess. Creates natural water conditon instantly by neutrilixing fresh tap water's chlorine content which is very harmful to aquarium fish.It also effectively removes Choloramines, gaseous ammonia, heavy metals such as lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, mercury and cyanide found in water collected from springs and lakes. It provides a safety screen for the delicate mucus membranes on scales and fills against infections. It will reduce stress in fish every time water is added or changed. Anti-chlorine should be used whenever fresh tap water is added to the aquarium.
Ingredients: N2S2O35H2O+EDTA
Packing: Available in 25ml, 50ml, 100ml, 200ml.
Directions for use: Use 5ml for every25 litres of fresh tap water.
Click to expand...

Lots of American made water conditioners also state that they will remove chloramines, which in reality they will not.
Sodium thiosulfate causes the bond between chlorine and ammonia to break, but it only reduces the chlorine portion.
Having said that from what I can gather Sri Lanka only uses chlorine as a drinking water disinfectant.

Impossible to say from the sidelines exactly what killed your fish, but I have personally never found Orange Head Tapajos to be an overly sensitive fish when it comes to water changes, conditioners, etc. In fact, out of the fish that you listed, juvenile C. pleurophthalma can be extremely sensitive to water changes, so much so that many young pleuros have been known to die shortly after a water change. So the fact that they have no issue with what you are doing, nor do any of your other fish, is a bit puzzling.

I would try upping the level of anti-chlorine that you've been using, you may very well be right about the chlorine levels fluctuating in your tap water. In order to know how much anti-chlorine to use, you need to know what they are basing their dosage rate on (as in how much conditioner to treat a set volume of water that's treated with a known chlorine residual value) as well as knowing what the residual value of chlorine is in your tap water. Otherwise it's pretty much all by guess or by golly.

Can you get your hands on Seachem products in your area? If so, I would go that route.


HTH
 
I started googling the water quality reports in Sri Lanka after reading the post and found that the mineral content of some parts of Sri Lanka are quite high (Fl,Cl, etc).
Though the high concentration of minerals may not effect species such as Cichla, these concentrations may be too much for some sensitive species of Geophagus. I would think that tetras would also be in this category, but maybe aquarium breeding populations have become accustomed to water conditions over decades, whereas some of the more recent hobby introductions of soft water Geophagine species may have not.
As RD stated free chlorine is the preferred disinfection method in Sri Lanka, so simple sodium thiosulfate should be sufficient.
I would think for the Geophagines mixing collected rain water with treated tap(maybe 50%) may be needed to cut the high mineral content in half.
Although using pond water seems to help, the introduction of parasites would be enough put me off it use.
 
I can't imagine that mineral content would outright kill a geo, of any species. I've seen most species kept in captivity, including OH Tapajos, raised in liquid rock, no problem with regards to sudden die offs of any kind. It's always a possibility, but IME not very probable.

In Weidner's book on SA Eartheater's he states: "A hardness of up to 20 dGH and alkaline water (up to pH 8.0) will not prevent G. sp. "Tapajos Orange Head" from breeding successfully, and this species does not seem to be particularly susceptible to the skin lesions that commonly occur in Geophagus in harder water."

Having said that over the long haul I do believe that some geo species, as well as certain other SA species that originate in the more acidic black water areas can be more sensitive to hard water with high mineral content, and can over time succumb to diseases such as HITH etc. The same holds true for C. pleurophthalma which also originate in some of the acidic black water districts of Borneo.
 
RD. said:
Actually no, it doesn't. The Anti-Chlorine sold in the Sri Lanka market is a form of sodium thiosulfate, which will only affect chlorine, not ammonia.

Vulgarity checker won't let me post the link, but here's the write up on ant-chlorine sold by a LFS in Punjab. I assume this is the same brand the OP who resides in Sri Lanka is using.



Lots of American made water conditioners also state that they will remove chloramines, which in reality they will not.
Sodium thiosulfate causes the bond between chlorine and ammonia to break, but it only reduces the chlorine portion.
Having said that from what I can gather Sri Lanka only uses chlorine as a drinking water disinfectant.

Impossible to say from the sidelines exactly what killed your fish, but I have personally never found Orange Head Tapajos to be an overly sensitive fish when it comes to water changes, conditioners, etc. In fact, out of the fish that you listed, juvenile C. pleurophthalma can be extremely sensitive to water changes, so much so that many young pleuros have been known to die shortly after a water change. So the fact that they have no issue with what you are doing, nor do any of your other fish, is a bit puzzling.

I would try upping the level of anti-chlorine that you've been using, you may very well be right about the chlorine levels fluctuating in your tap water. In order to know how much anti-chlorine to use, you need to know what they are basing their dosage rate on (as in how much conditioner to treat a set volume of water that's treated with a known chlorine residual value) as well as knowing what the residual value of chlorine is in your tap water. Otherwise it's pretty much all by guess or by golly.

Can you get your hands on Seachem products in your area? If so, I would go that route.


HTH
Click to expand...

Interesting. I missed the Sri Lanka part.

I assumed the reason the dosages are higher than needed is for people who use it for chloramines.

What are you supposed to use for chloramines then?

Sent from my SM-N900V using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
I assumed the reason the dosages are higher than needed is for people who use it for chloramines.
Click to expand...

That's what the manufacturers would like everyone to believe, when in fact all the higher dosage rate ensures is that the chlorine/ammonia bond is broken. In some cases that's all that might be neccessary, especially if one is performing smaller water changes, or they have a heavily planted tank that will utilize the ammonia quickly. Every set up is different, be it pH, temp, planted, non planted, even the matutity of the tank and its bio-filtration. It's all relevent when the toxicty of free ammonia is being discussed.

Products such as Seachem Prime, Seachem Safe, ClorAm-X, etc will not just split the chlorine/ammonia bond, and reduce chlorine to fish safe chloride, it also detoxifies the free ammonia until ones bio bacteria consumes it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom