Lock, Stock and four smoking barrels.

[Outbackozzie]

I just went back through your thread, and cant see any real reason for the ICH, except maybe the cooler temps, and the stress of being moved.

Have they been feeding well, especially at the lower temps? And what size are woops were the fish?

[GaryD]

Hi,

If your fish are covered in 'fluff' it's probably not ICH. ICH displays as small white spots (like course salt granules) on the body and fins and affected fish will 'flash' as they attempt to dislodge the parasite that causes the symptoms.

The 'fluff' sounds more like a fungal infection.


Gold fish came from shop and our pond
There are two likely causes for your problem.....either you imported the infection with the fish that you bought from the shop or your other fish were somehow stressed.

I'd advise strongly against buying anything live from a aquarium shop.

Personally, I don't think goldfish have any place in a tank with food species. They contribute nothing positive to a food fish system and they may well carry disease that will affect the other fish.

If you're going to run goldfish at all, keep them in a separate system......like a goldfish-powered salad system.

Gary

[gtpratt]

ICH displays as small white spots (like course salt granules) on the body and fins

Definately a fluff, not a white spot at all.


The 'fluff' sounds more like a fungal infection.

There are two likely causes for your problem.....either you imported the infection with the fish that you bought from the shop or your other fish were somehow stressed.

OK. sounds reasonable.
The Goldies which are left are all very healthy...
I did siphon off all of the dirt from the bottom of the tanks a few days before they started to drop dead?? Maybe that stressed them....



I'd advise strongly against buying anything live from a aquarium shop.


OK I am begining to agree with you. Unfortunately the fish pond is really big and deep so catching the home bred fish was quite stressful for them.



If you're going to run goldfish at all, keep them in a separate system......like a goldfish-powered salad system.

Gary

Yeah. I needed to put something in to keep the plants alive.. remember I am a little heavy handed when it comes to putting in urea....

OK do I do anything about the fungus?

Do I remove the goldfish and just add a little sea sol each day until I get fishies back in there?

I am sure the light thing could be an issue...

One dead Gold fish was trapped at the pump inlet suction area presumably for a couple of days before the outbreak? could that have caused a pandemic? (two tanks)

Regards.

Gra.

Oh BTW, they were eating well even with the lower temps?

[Outbackozzie]

I did siphon off all of the dirt from the bottom of the tanks a few days before they started to drop dead?? Maybe that stressed them....


That be why right there. Stirring up the craap on the bottom, especially a lot of it, will cause fish deaths. Reduces the o2 in the water while processing the waste.

Other members have had the same problem - always clean the bottom of the tank over several days, in small sections.

[Murray]

Or clean it very regularly. I broom the bottom of my tanks every week.

[gtpratt]

That be why right there. Stirring up the craap on the bottom, especially a lot of it, will cause fish deaths. Reduces the o2 in the water while processing the waste.

Other members have had the same problem - always clean the bottom of the tank over several days, in small sections.

Thanks everybody...

Does this mean I can put more fishies in?

Regards.

Gra.

[Outbackozzie]

List how many fish you have now, size, amount of water you have, and growbed volume.

[gtpratt]

List how many fish you have now, size, amount of water you have, and growbed volume.

There are 10 goldfish, 3 about 6 inches 1 about 4 inches and the others about 3 inches.

I have 1500 litres of water in the two tank system.

550 litres of grow bed.

Regards.

Gra.

[Outbackozzie]

500 litres of growbed will support up to 15kg of fish.

each 100l of growbed has been shown to handle 3kg of fish well.

Thats a lot of goldfishes.

[gemmell]

I've got some good piccies of the various ways i've managed to kill my fish on the blog. I think the white cottony fluff is most likely flexibacter - but the cause is nearly always water quality.

I've also had dropsy, hole-in-the-head disease, ICH and just about every other problem. Basically I had heavy metals in the system and this affected the fishes immune response, so they got whatever was goin' around.

[Crusty]

But he is an organic chemist.......and he did invent fishless cycling.

.....and here's what he had to say about too much ammonia.

"It IS possible to add too much ammonia to the tank (generally several times the amounts suggested in either recipe), as some individuals discovered by mistake. What happens in this case is that the ammonia will spike very far off the chart, then the nitrite will spike as well (also way off the chart), and it will continue to spike for a very long time. Why? There are a couple of possibilities. The first is that the filter media and surfaces in the tank or oxygen levels are simply insufficient to grow and maintain a bacterial colony massive enough to convert all of the ammonia and all of the nitrite to nitrates. Another likely possibility is that the ammonia levels are high enough to inhibit growth (through a biofeedback mechanism) of the bacteria rather than promoting it."

Thought I would touch on this part of the thread to quantify the quote above and some relationships of ammonia, pH., temperature and Nitrosomonas sp. with a few factoids to consider.

General requirements for successful nitrification bacteria culture, pH range of 7.0 - 9.0 (optimum is 7.8). Temperature 7c - 40c (lethal limits) 24c metabolic rate at its highest, reduction in activity scaled either side of 24c. Dissolved Oxygen 4.5 mg O2 per 1 mg of NH3 (un-ionised ammonia) This is an important part. As your free ammonia increases (direct relationship with pH and temperature) your oxygen demand will increase.

As with any aquaculture we are interested in the un-ionised ammonia which we work out from the TAN (total ammonia nitrogen). I wont go on too much about fish as we are talking about bacteria, so for reference, the lethal level for un-ionised ammonia for fish ranges from 0.3mg/L to 2mg/L. Sub-lethal levels where the fish health is starting to suffer is generally 0.05mg/L.

To summarize the water parameters for ideal for good bacteria establishment - temp 24c, pH 7.8, plenty of oxygen and good alkalinity (>70ppm). The first bacteria we need to kick in is the Nitrosomonas Sp. to oxidize the Ammonia to Nitrite. Your test kits may not read free ammonia (NH3) but the total ammonia nitrogen (TAN) which is made up of our toxic un-ionised ammonia (NH3) and the non toxic ammonium ion NH4. You will need a table and a calculator to work out what percentage of toxic is in your system. In general terms, as the temperature and pH goes up so does the percentage of the toxic ammonia (NH3) to the total ammonia.

Sidebar:This is a link to an online Free Ammonia Calculator (http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~piwc/w3-research/free-ammonia/nh3.html), how accurate it is I can not know, but it may come in handy for your guys...
Anyways on with it. To cut a long story short, 16mg/L of free ammonia does not inhibit anabolic processes of Nitrosomonas though it has been found the ideal amount of free ammonia is 0.36mg/L for constant growth of Nitrosomonas.

So the ammonia is not really any concern at this point. But please read on...

The real inhibitor to Nitrosomonas is nitrous acid (Nitrite), which poses a slight conundrum, considering Nitrosomonas oxidizes ammonia to nitrite. Here in lays the balancing act. So our Nitrosomonas is inhibited by Nitrite, which it produces through oxidization, what a drama. Nitrosomonas growth inhibition starts at 0.10mg/L of HNO2 (nitrous acid) and is completely stopped at 0.40mg/L. However Nitrosomonas will continue to oxidize ammonia up to a maximum of 0.63mg/L.

Not knowing all of the water parameters for Grahams set up (temperature is missing), lets assume the water temp was 20c. Graham gave us a pH of 8 and an ammonia reading of 6ish. Using that calculator above we end up with 0.23mg/L. This would indicate those levels will have no negative effect on the nitrogen cycle.

In the case of Jonathan with 20mg/L total ammonia, we again do not know all the water parameters but since we are assuming a fair bit, lets continue doing so. We will keep the same parameters as Grahams set up and simply change the ammonia and push the temperature up to 25c. Using the same calculator linked above, we get a result of 1.08mg/L. This still does not limit the Nitrosomonas, however it is above the affinity constant of 0.36mg/L NH3. I can not comment on what the result of this aside from the second stage of the nitrogen cycle could be a little slower due to the bio surface area of the media may not have enough room for the Nitrobacter to colonize.

I forgot to mention other goodies will inhibit growth such as Sodium at 3500mg/L, Potassium at 2500mg/L, Calcium at 2500mg/L and Magnesium at 1000mg/L which may be handy for those adding these goodies to their growbeds and relying on them for biofiltration.

[Adareaqua]

Gary - any idea where we might find these "Mega " bins in W.A.
Cheers

[GaryD]

I don't know who the local distributor is but this is the company that makes them

<H5>Viscount Plastics (Australia) Pty Ltd

173 Bannister Road
Canning Vale WA 6155
PO Box 1481
Canning Vale WA 6155
Australia
Tel: +61 8 9456 8200
Fax: +61 8 9455 1136
Email: wapackaging@viscount.com.au (wapackaging@viscount.com.au)


</H5>