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.