Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Guys,

I am an experienced Fish Keeper and I am facing a problem now. I bought ceramic rings on ebay and they gave me a free sample of Nitrifying bacteria with it. My tank and pond both were cycled. But I still wanted to try those bacteria. So i put them in my tank and pond as per instruction.

next day my koi fish stopped eating in pond and in tank all my tetras and gourami fish started flashing. After checking I found Ammonia reading 4 PPM on both my tank and in Pond. I think that was some poisonous bacteria that killed all my beneficial bacteria.

I immediately started changing water but as both my tank and pond are quite large so I manged to change only 20% of water with RO water.

Tetras started to die from next day, one at a time. I, in a panic (Because it's been a while when I lost my last fish), drained almost all the tank and pond water and filled it with Regular Tap Water. I checked my tap water has no Chlorine and Chloramine, not sure about heavy metals though.

Now I see my Tetras are flashing even after changing almost 90% water. Koi in Pond are not flashing but are bottom sitting, they now come out only in dark and when no one is around and if anyone goes near the pond they start swimming in a panic and very fast and sometimes even dart around.

RO water gives us a TDS of 200 - 250 and Regular Tap Water has TDS of 2000 - 2200 with some salt in it.

Can you guys suggest me what should I do at this time?

Changing all the water with RO water will take lot of time. And Pond is connected to Aquaponic set up so i don't want to add any medicine in it except salt.

Any help is appreciated.

Regards
In nature fish live in non purified mud ponds so i thought that they must live in my Tap water as well. But i see some odd behavior like Flashing.

I tried to see if they have white spots but none of them have white spots.

Not sure what happened there but here's what I would do.

Salt the water in case the ammonia break down generates a nitrite spike as well (It may already have done this) (use for Nitrite issues - 1ppt = 1KG per 1000L or 1gm per L). The salting helps them build a slime coat and reduces stress along with helping against nitrite poisoning. The ammonia and/or any nitrite, probably caused some damage and it's just a waiting game to see if the fish survive it or not. I would check for dead fish (this could have caused the initial ammonia spike - they don't always float) mostly leave the fish alone except for salting and just watch to see if any die (remove immediately if any do).

What's the water temp (ammonia toxicity at 4 ppm along with whatever pH and temp you have can be found here - http://ibcofaquaponics.com/information/tables-and-charts/? Did the product contain a strong buffer that altered the pH of your system dramatically? These are some questions you should be asking.

I don't know what really happened. But I now have changed all my tap water to RO purified water. And mysteriously all my Tiger Barbs almost stopped flashing. Now they flash just a few times a day. however I see my rainbow shark still flashing every minute and I see no white spots on him. So now I have added Anti-Ich Med to be on safe side.

2 serpae tetras who were looking very lethargic anyway died, may be due to ammonia poisoning that occurred few days back. But now Ammonia and Nitrite reading is 0 and Nitrates are 20 PPM.

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