Smoking Inside With Aquariums

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wild bill said:
Ok so a lot of you think I am a nut. How many of you use air fresheners in your house to keep it smelling nice but are saying that smoking is bad. Lets face some of you are probably putting worse things in the air in your house than what smoking would bring. Most of us take better care of our fish than we do our selves.
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Not me! I never use air freshener or any airborne chemicals in the room with my animals.

I've heard too many stories of people redoing floors, or spraying aerosols into the air, painting, etc, and the fumes crashing their fish tank or killing their snake or whatever.

If I wouldn't breathe it in 24/7, you wont find it floating around my animal room.

Not to date myself here. I'm just saying, your animals generally don't leave the room their enclosure is in. The air in there is all the air they will ever breathe, or that will be dissolved into their water, etc.

Animals in the wild in heavily polluted places die from poor air quality. In a closed room, conditions are even more sensitive. There are smokers in my house, and I insist they blow smoke out the window, and complain if I smell it (and turn on fans and air the place out). Call me paranoid, but the way I was always taught, you don't take those kinds of chances with the animals in your care.

I think this thread is probably not long for the world, but I've enjoyed the discussion

I love this post.PNG
 
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Just for the record, I don't allow smoking in my home.

That doesn't mean that I will blindly get behind some tree hugging DVM that decides something is bad for me, my fish, or whatever. Some DVM's feel that my tap water is toxic to my pets. Meh
 
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Hello; Had I a mass spectrometer I would test a sample of room air with tobacco smoke and that had been smoked in for some time. I would then take a sample from an aquarium that had been in the room. This way it could be determined if and perhaps how much of the stuff in smoke makes it into the water. That would my first step. The results of that would determine would determine if any additional steps were necessary. I don't suppose anyone has a spectrometer in a corner somewhere.

I had limited access to one some decades ago to study water quality issues. I understand they are much simpler to set up and use now days.

To the OP. These threads take on a direction of their own. This one has been worth the effort. There have been some worthy comments.
 
Ebbi said what she wanted was some scientific proof one way or the other on the harm no effect of smoking around our tanks. Some one will do a study and find yes it is toxic as it comes then some one else will find there is no harm. These studies we put so much faith in seem to support who ever pays them to do the study. Lets just if you don't want soking in your house don't allow it. If you smoke and smoke around your fish then do as you do don't let others come in and tell you how to live in your house.
 
I would think potentially, enough smoke could interfere with gas exchange and that would not be good for your fish but the smoke concentration of second hand smoking isn't enough to offset gas exchange rates significantly. I personally have witnessed massive clouds of medically prescribed smoke in households that didn't seem to affect the health/reproduction of their fish being kept. I wonder if labyrinth breathers are more affected by smoke. Personally smoking indoors is a little hard core for me.
 
Animals in the wild in heavily polluted places die from poor air quality.
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Where exactly would that be?

From toxic spills and industrial pollution, certainly, but air pollution? How common is that? And how extreme would that air pollution have to be to actually kill native fish? Chernobyl?

In the wild, even fish exposed to tons of raw sewage, and tons of industrial waste, still seem to somehow manage to survive to maturity, and reproduce for generations. Some of the crater lakes in Nicaragua are a prime example of this.

NICARAGUA: Cleaning Up ‘World’s Biggest Toilet’

http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/03/nicaragua-cleaning-up-lsquoworldrsquos-biggest-toiletrsquo/


The wastewater from 60 chemical companies and Managua’s 1.2 million people has been dumped untreated into the lake from 17 drains since 1927, when the government ordered all sewage to be channeled into the lake until a new sewer system was built.
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When I as a kid the fish & wildlife would post No Fishing signs along the shores of the Detroit River, not because of spawning, but because of mercury levels being too high, and there was risk to human health if one consumed the fish. In the early 70's industrial pollution in the US and Canada was at an all time high (Lake Erie was at that time considered a "dead lake"), and yet most of the native fish all survived. It just goes to show how resilient most fish truly are.



Personally I would not believe that cig smoke itself would present any health issues directly to a fish, but tar & nicotine residue from that smoke, if left to build up, and then ran down the inside of ones tank, could over time quite possibly cause some health issues. That I think is where the real focus should probably be, not the smoke itself. But again one would have to factor in many variables to draw any hard statistical conclusions.
 
again, i know its beating a dead horse. Its never going to get up. Long as you do good tank husbandry. change the water, scrub the tank sides. rinse your filters properly its a non issue, for the smoker? well we all know the verdict on that one.

And a FYI I am a smoker. any other comments on that are between me, my wife and my doc.
 
FYI I do not smoke in the house, but that has nothing to do with the cats, dogs or fish. everything to do with my wife and kids.
 
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