Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have a small system, 100 gallon stock tank, about 15 goldfish/minnows. two grow beds with, peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, and cilantro. found what looked like a fungus growing on one or two of the fish and went to Wal-Mart and got some fungus clear tablets...added enough to treat 60 gallons to the fish tank.

of course I didn't look on the forums for the correct way to treat the system...got ahead of myself. since my fish are not going to be eaten, but wanted to eat the vegetables...but with the treatment have I just effectively caused my vegies to be inedible?

please help.

What are the tablets and what is in them?

Did they work?

EDIT: If I have the right product, ingredients are Nitrofurazone, Furazolidone, Potassium Dichromate. Got to go out so maybe look them up and see what they consist of? Only the last one looks like a chemical - the other 2 look like trade names.

I just added them this evening, so as to the effectiveness hasn't been determined. Brand is Jungle Fungus Clear fizz tabs. Active Ingredients are Nitrofurazone, Furazolidone, and Potassium Dichromate.

Not too sure about the product you've added, but adding sea salt to your system at 3 parts per thousand (3gm per litre/3kg per 1000L) probably would've solved the problem.

If you're genuinely concerned about the product you added, then I would add the salt to the system now, then do some daily partial water changes, about 20-30% per day for about a week, just to dilute down the amount of anti-fungal treatment in the water.

The top-up water you add with each partial water change should be aerated for at least 24hrs and salted to 3ppt as well, so you're not reducing the salt level in the main system. The pH of the top-up water should also closely match that of the main system water.

After a week or so at 3ppt you could stop adding salt to the top-up water and reduce the top-ups to about 10% per day for a another couple of weeks, just to gradually reduce the salt level in the system.

The plants won't be dramatically affected by salt at 3ppt for a week. You may see a little browning around the edge of the lettuce leaves, but it will dissipate as you reduce the salt in the system over following weeks. I recently salted a system to 6ppt, reduced it to 3ppt over a couple of days, then further down to 1ppt over a couple of weeks and the only plants affected were the lettuce and the burning of the leaf margins was minimal, almost un-noticeable to the untrained eye.

Just read this:


Isn't that the same chemical the Erin Brokivich story started with?

Vegetable seedlings are cheap... Medical bills... I suppose the lesson here is to not run out to Walmart.

I've been running around 3ppt salinity for over 3 weeks with no adverse effects on chard, cruciferous vegies, onions, peas, beetroot, brocaletti and garlic.
I would not eat anything treated with Potassium dichromate, apart from its toxicity, it is also a suspected carcinogen.