gr33nthumb

jgm that is an interesting theory that sounds very possible. I suppose when running Co2 and after enough doses you could effectively "seal" your tank preventing any gas exchange. Learn something new everyday!

The Trigger

Thank you. I'm happy someone found out something to make me feel like I'm not going crazy. As much success as people have had with this medication, I still believe it is the reason for this mini cycle. Today I checked the water and read no visible signs of either ammonia or nitrite. The fish are all fine and the water is much clearer (was cloudy do to a slight bacterial bloom). I honestly believed there was a dead fish but didn't find one. No decaying plants either. Never churned up the substrate so I was at a loss. I do keep good surface aggitation at night so the fish get enough oxygen but it is possible the foam layer at the top stopped the Exchange of oxygen. It even says on the bottle may cause a harmless foam......ha......harmless huh.

gr33nthumb

Still seems to be a strange situation, in my head anyway. A thin, oily film from the tea tree extract could effectively shut down the waters gas exchange ability which would kill fish due to lack of oxygen. Now, your ammonia and nitrite readings are strange in this scenario as the only way that could have happened with the oil film theory is the lack of oxygen killing off enough good bacteria to make levels jump enough to be toxic. Just a thought! Glad things worked out trigger!

The Trigger

Well I'm not going to touch the tank for at least a week just to make sure i dont screw any new bacteria up. Thanks everyone for your help

John LeVasseur

Hello,

It is always a good idea to remove a sick fish from a tank and treat it separately in a "sick tank". Dosing a bio-system (which is how you must think of a planted tank) is risky. The bio-chemistry may be impacted in unpredictable ways.

These chemicals can react to your tanks particular unique chemistry. (Don't confuse the term chemistry used here as the talk about "chemistry" like with hardness and such) Every tank has a slightly different overall chemistry (both inorganic and living organic). This is due to many variables unique to your tank; your water sources, fertilizer choices & combinations, even ornaments, etc. Chemically, medicine treatments for diseases are highly reactive agents, it's how they work. They may have reacted with the micro-biology and other microscopic organisms living in your bio-system. These may have (not saying they did) died en-masse from the Melafix and effected your nitrate levels. This may also account for the "film" you describe. A layer of dead and decaying microbes! Yuk!

Another possibility is it may have reacted with organic or inorganic chemicals in your system that may have produced nitrogen as a by-product, which would show up as nitrates in a test. They may have even produced Nitrates directly. It is hard to say for sure for anyone. Except maybe a micro-biologist with access to microscopes, spectrometers and such. Without you understanding fully (and that's not easy) your entire bio-system and all of its chemical & living biological components, predicting the effects of medical agents such as Melafix is dubious at best. It's best not to dose a tank with any medications. So ... be safe.

You should keep a small separate tank that you can set-up just to treat sickly friends, without affecting your other friends or your bio-system. One of those little 2 gal tanks and an air pump filter work great.

Just some advice...

John LeVasseur

I'm a Junior member? ... hurumph!

The Trigger

No No No No.....so after having another spike right after my PWC yesterday afternoon i had a red flag thrown up right away. So now i knew something was seriously wrong.......and happy(not really) to say i found the problem, and it turns out to be worse than i thought. Something occured to me that never occured to me before. Test the tap water. And when i did I was shocked to find .5-1ppm of ammonia in my tap water!? this has NEVER been like this before. I do know that my area outside Philadelphia is currently going through a slight drought situation. we are 10 inches under the normal rainfall which we should be at right now. I have also heard that when droughts are in effect, water companys will treat the water whith extra chloramines (which is ammonia bonded to chlorine if im not mistaken) to prevent the water from stagnating. So my question is what the heck am i supposed to do now!? now im afraid to do water changes but i dont want to continue adding ammonia to my tank because a water change is all that will do. I heard aging the water might help? Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

And thanks John LeVasseur. Turns out i was wrong and thats not the problem afterall.

jgmbosnia1

Wow....never heard of that one before. I hope it doesn't happen where I live. I don't think my county has been out of some sort of drought for the past couple of years. I'm not sure if a simple tap water filter would help you out or not. There are some pretty cheap RO units out there for sale.

The Trigger

Yeah I was blown away when I looked at that vial after 5 minutes. I've been thinking about a RO/DI unit. But until I decide on that one I need to find a way to neutralize the ammonia in the tap water. I use prime but I wasn't sure if letting the water sit for a few days will help or just do nothing. will the chloromines or ammonia evaporate out of the water or does only chlorine evaporate and the ammonia remain?

gr33nthumb

Chlorine tends to precipitate out of water rather quickly. I dont see a problem with filling buckets (if you do it that way) and letting them sit a bit longer to allow the prime to work. If you dont do it the bucket way, dose prime then fill tank. Check out Seachem safe, its powdered prime, works wonders!

gr33nthumb

Pulled this info up quick. Hope it helps some!

http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/wa...q0050.-5eR.htm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000DZDV80/...SIN=B000DZDV80