API Tapwater Conditioner and Pleco Losses vs Prime

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 13 Oct 2006, 20:41

I am curious to know whether anyone has had fish losses after a water change using API's product? I usually use Prime but bought a gallon of API and began experiencing losses and fish in distress problems. Last night I did my water changes and the plecos began acting distressed. This morning all 6 L134 were dead and in another tank 4 L204 and 3 L66 were in distess. I made another water change and used Prime and also some of SeaChem's Stability and the remaining fish began to breathe easier but the damage had already been severe and expensive. I have noticed various stress reactions before nearly losing discus breeders and I did lose 6 Green Dwarf Pike Cichlids and other Plecos. I thought it might have had something to do with varying amount of chlorine and chloromines in the water supply. This last time it was pretty clear that either the API wasn't effective, was reacting or forming toxins but regardless all tanks received the same % of w/c at same temperature and the trouble began. I keep and raise three kinds of fw invertebrates, glass and cherry shrimp also dwarf crayfish and they do not have any adverse reactions to the water changes at all. They are generally pretty good indicators of water quality.
I have not ever experienced such adverse consequences in 40 years just from making water changes, often not using any kind of neutralizer. I usually use it when I'm changing more than 1/3 of the water and in this case, a 2/3 water change to 24 aquariums.

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 14 Oct 2006, 15:09

Larry,
I'm sorry for your losses. I've been switching products around myself, but I don't purchase the quantities that you do. I have an unopened bottle of the AP stuff. I've read on test kit directions that some products may interfere with results. Other than that, I don't know of any differences. I tend to stick to Prime or AmQuel.

It may sound as if there was a dump of chlorine or chloramine in the water supply by the local municipality. If they pick up on a high amount of bacteria on one of their local tests(either well or resevoir), they will over-compensate with a "dump." This is unfortunate for those of us with fish. Have you been able to do a test on the water out of the tap? Sometimes, if I run the tap long enough, it smells like a swimming pool.

I have an RO filter and treat that water with a product. I imagine having an enormous number of tanks would rule out an RO system. Please let me know how you do.
Amanda

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 14 Oct 2006, 20:17

Thanks,Amanda,
I have a couple of solutions I have'nt tried. One is the use the conditioned water after 24 hours of aeration and the other is to check the pH and ammonia(in the form of ammonium) to see if their is a chance that it is going from slightly acid to slightly alkaline releasing free ammonia.
Some conditioners can also cause a drop in dissolved oxygen and it may need more time before using to bring it back to higher levels. These are Peckoltia and Hypancistrus that I have only had for less than a month. They are still run down from the capture and import ordeals. I ship them in and I know they haven't had any conditioning before I get them.
I think of my shrimp as "canaries in the mine" and I have never had any trouble with them even when they share the tanks where the losses occur. I have to resolve this because it is changing the fun of fish keeping into Russian Roulette.

Post by **Barbie** » 15 Oct 2006, 03:46

I'm sorry to hear that Larry

. I use tap water conditioner with no problem. Then again, I usually don't do more than a 50% water change on my systems. Was this after larger volume changes? What a bummer! I positively hate the smell of prime, so I guess I can't be much help in that regard though, sorry.

Barbie

Kenneth Wong · Post by **Kenneth Wong** » 15 Oct 2006, 05:33

Hi Larry,

I would like to know what is your pH in your tank normally and what is the pH in your tap? I ask because if your tank is normally in slightly acidic side and you perform a large water change your resulting mix may swing the pH real high if your tap has a high pH. Like you said this will cause the ammonia to be in its toxic form if there is any ammonia. Your other fish may be able to cope with this swing because they have adapted and are stronger but with newer arrivals they may still be weakened and have not adapted to your water. I'm not familiar with API's product but does it take care of ammonia and chlorine? Even if API breaks down ammonia(or makes it non-toxic) you may still have a problem with the pH swing that the newer fish can not handle. This is just a thought.

The other thing to keep in mind is testing of ammonia that Amanda alluded to. Ammonia test kits are usually nessler or salicylate. Nessler test kits are the ones affected by water conditioners that binds or neutralizes ammonia. Easy way to tell which test kit you have is if the color changes from clear to yellow to indicate ammonia this is a nessler. Test kits that change from yellow to green are salicylate. You probably already know this but for the casual reader this could be helpful information.

Good luck

Ken

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 15 Oct 2006, 17:50

Barbie, I appreciate your sentiments. I made about a 2/3 volume water change. Ken, I have to test before I change water next time to see if the pH is swinging from acidic to alkaline. The survivors also had ich or similar that was not evident at the time of the last change and is the primary problem to be dealt with now. It's never simple.
I am aware of the neccessity of using the Nessler test when using some water conditioners. It is because I don't own one yet that I placed a greater emphasis on knowing my pH for now and making more frequent but conservative water changes. I have water that does naturally have good buffering capacity and have really only paid very close attention to pH when I am making a change to very soft acid water to tetras prior to placing them into the breeding tanks because many Characin eggs require those conditions for the eggs to hatch. I will check it today to see what direction pH is going and how fast.
Here are the tests results of the tapwater per water dept.
Hardness(CaCO3) 50ppm
TDS 240ppm
Conductivity 300umhos/cm
Total hardness 74ppm
pH 7.4
Reading 5 days after water change per my tests
Nitrate 20ppm
Nitrite 1ppm
Total Hardness 200ppm
Total buffering 120ppm
pH 7.4
Edit: I just completed another water change on the visibly infected fish L066,L204,L333 plus it has infected some other fish added before the losses, young female bettas, C. sterbai. One of the L066 immediately began dying. I took skin scrapings for microscopic examination from the dying L066 and it appears that they have a severe infection of Chilodonella. According to my references, symptoms include respiratory distress,clamped fins and depression. It goes on to report that infected fishes die suddenly without apparent signs of disease. This is of course, what happened with the disease becoming evident after the initial losses.
Treatment has begun too late and I expect only the strongest fish has a chance of surviving. It is also a hazard to my existing collection. All I can do is treat and be careful about spreading the disease.

Kenneth Wong · Post by **Kenneth Wong** » 15 Oct 2006, 20:24

Hi Larry,

I'm sorry to here that you have a parasite problem. Chilodonella is easily treated with formalin or Potassium Permangenate but of course like you said the stronger will survive. So the problem maybe a combination of the parasite and the pH swing or it could just be the parasite causing all the problem. I notice that your Nitrite is also present, this is probably caused by the meds disrupting your filter. You will need to keep an eye on your ammonia and nitrite during the treatment, and perform water changes as needed to keep them as low as possible.

In regards to the Nessler and salicylate test kits. The Salicylate test kits are the ones not affected by the conditioners. Nessler is the one that is affected.

Good luck with resolving the parasite problem. Hopefully you will be able to confine the outbreak.

Ken

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 15 Oct 2006, 20:48

Hi Ken, I was just guessing on the test method's name. Just knew I had the wrong one. If I can just keep them alive long enough for the meds to work I have a chance. I have enough fish that I had thought I was past the worst stages with the new plecos and wasn't paying enough attention to them. They haven't been eating and I kept feeding which made matters worse. I have more plecos coming. This time I will be more cautious and begin treating and keep it up longer than I did with these. This bug attacks the gills and on armored catfish, skin lesions often don't show up until the disease is advanced. I have to relearn old and expensive lessons sometimes...

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 16 Oct 2006, 12:35

Is there anything more frustrating than when you "do the right thing" and it doesn't work...

I'm not sure which product you're using, Larry, as you mention API, which is the company producing amongst other things MelaFix and StressCoat. I do use StressCoat in all my tap-water, and I have done water-changes that are roughly 2/3 of the water without any ill effect. Of course, that's not to say that the StressCoat is doing what it says on the bottle, just says that my fish didn't seem harmed by my 2/3 water-change! Web-site here:
http://aquariumpharm.com/en_us/index.asp

Amanda mentions a company called AP, Aquarium Products, which is a different corporation [very similar name tho']. Website: http://www.aq-products.com/Info.htm [They make amongst other things Clout, which is a good medication against certain internal bacterial problems, such as clout].

--
Mats

bronzefry · Post by **bronzefry** » 16 Oct 2006, 13:56

My bad, Mats.

I find it interesting that "Ammo-Lock" by API raised a barrel of RO water by 100 microSeimens/cm yesterday. I only added a 1/5th dosage. I need to be careful when I add these things.
Amanda

MatsP · Post by **MatsP** » 16 Oct 2006, 14:10

Well, just about ANYTHING you add to RO water will increase the conductivity. Not sure what Ammo-lock contains [1], but I would say that I'm not entirely surprised.

In a well-established tank, anything but dechlorinator shouldn't be needed on a regular basis. Of course, RO-water is dechlorinated as part of the RO-process, so there's no need for that in the RO-water either... If you use tap-water, some sort of dechlorinator would be needed for sure.

[1] <Rant>I think the content of most of these products is far too secretive - I do understand that they need to keep the details of the recipe secret, but there's nothing but advertising blurb about what the ingredients are. I find more useful stuff on a Coke-can than on a bottle of StressCoat - and I'm pretty sure that the money spent to find out what Coke contains is certainly bigger than what StressCoat has spent on developing the recipe... </Rant>

--
Mats

Crazie.Eddie · Post by **Crazie.Eddie** » 17 Oct 2006, 16:16

Sorry to hear about the loss. I use Tap water conditioner, Stress Coat, and Prime and never had a problem with any of them. I normally use whatever bottle is closest to me at the time. I primarily use API tap water conditioner or stress coat in my tank for aging water, which is used for WC in my L046 zebra pleco tank.

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 18 Oct 2006, 21:23

I can report that he recent disease and then mysterious deaths of Hypancistrus L66 and Panaque L204 has begun to get better. Too late for the L134's, only one survived out of 7. The daily treatments of malachite green/formulin solution has reduced the disease to the point where the fish have litle trace of the Chilodonella skin cysts that coated them. I will continue the treatments for another month and that should resolve the current problems. I think that extending the quarantine and prophlactic tratments of new fish should help prevent severe problems with any new fish. I won't be likely to underestimate the virulence of this disease again.
Thanks for everone's assistance and thoughts. More L134 are scheduled to arrive next week. My supplier has had them spawn recently which is encouraging news. They are a very attractive fish. In the short time I had them I really came to like them. My new fish are supposed to be coming as adults. Maybe I will get the chance to have them breed for me, yet.