Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all,

I just thought that I would throw this out to the collective "brains trust" to see if my assumptions are correct.

My work colleage has a Fighting fish in a fish bowl on his desk. In the bowl is the fish, a couple of snails, an underwater plant growing in gravel and a seashell. He has had the fish in this set-up for approx 6 mths.

Approx 3 weeks ago he cleaned out the bowl because the water was clouding up a bit. After cleaning it stayed clear for a little while then started to cloud up quickly. The fish started to just sit at the bottom of the bowl not moving too much. I thought that he might have a problem with too much nitrate so I brought in my testers and tested the water this morning. Turns out that the problem is ammonia. My test shows it at approx 10ppm. (Nitrote was zero, Nitrate approx 5ppm) He has changed half the water and is planning on coming in on the weekend to give the system another clean. What I found interesting was that the system went 4 mths without any problems, but after he cleaned it it only took 3 weeks to become a problem. Then a thought occurred to me.

He refilled the tank using water that he got from a drink fountain rather than tap water. The drink fountain is one of those cooler where the water is supplied in large bottles and you place the bottle on top (eg http://www.aquavalley.com.au/products.html). My assumption is that that water is steralised in some form in its process of getting from the ground to the water cooler and that that has created 'dead' water.

When he cleaned the fish bowl then replaced it with this 'dead' water it resulted in a huge drop in the bacteria required for the nitrogen cycle.

Do you think that that is a reasonable assumption? If not, what else might be causing this ammonia spike? He feeds once a day and it is only small amounts, but this is what he did prior to the clean so that hasn't changed much. Any thought would be appreciated.

Tks

Simon

Simon

As far as I am aware the water is filtered but still contains a fair amount of dissolved minerals.
Last time I tested some mineral water it had a ph of 6, but this is very variable.
In a goldfish bowl he should have been doing water changes at least once a week and I hate to think what the temp changes are in that volume of water.

How did he 'clean' the tank.

If he did too good of a job he could have killed all the existing bacteria - it will take some time (month or 2) to re-establish...

Change all the water with some of your (or anybody's) AP water or other mature fishtank water.

The bacteria must have been cleaned out. (!)

Cloudiness occurs when you start cycling fresh and the highly likely cause of the cloudiness is the bacteria in the water column that have not yet settled on surfaces after forming a biofilm matrix.

Never ever really 'clean' the bowl. Try to keep changes as small as possible, preferably never much more than 50% of the water should be changed at a time.

By the way it is possible to debate upon whether this should be in the 'General Banter' or 'General System Discussions'.
Since the fishbowl has a plant in it, I think it could still qualify as a general AP system discussion

(I should become a lawyer)

Didnt happen to clean the tank with windex or another ammonia based glass cleaning product did he?

Or was the tank originally set up with some stuff to absorb and lock up ammonia? Common in aquarium but not appropriate for AP. Since it is a bowl without much in the way of active bio-filtration and you say he wasn't doing regular water changes before the clean out, I suspect the original set up must have been chemically enhanced.

Also, when doing a major clean/change out like he did, were any precautions taken to make sure the new water had a similar pH and temp to the old water. Fish are often hardier through major pH and temp swings than the bacteria are.

probably killed what little bacteria there was on the tank walls.

tell him to keep some duckweed and java moss in the tank. bye bye ammonia and nitrites.

The plants also are supposed to have a lot more surface area for bacteria.

Also don't forget that the fighting fish will slow down during the winter months. I know a couple of people who thought they
were dead and almost flushed them. When they were just very inactive. You could get away with not feeding it every day.
More like every 4-5 days.

This would also help your ammonia problem. I would also do a 25% water change a week with aged tap water or rainwater.

Or cycle it again and grow some water plants in the top like what was already suggested...

I did have some trouble deciding which forum to post this in. In the end I had a stab at it...



In an office with climate control I would not have thought that the fish would know when winter was about as the water temperature would not change much.

Anyway, I have convinced him that he needs to make regular water changes & to feed less. It took a little convincing as he didn't seem that concerned.

I guess I was more interested in whether I was right with my assumption re: the water not having any bacteria in it, which Sleepe seems to think was not the case.

AC usually turn off after 7pm....................an on again at about 6am

Psycho

I didn't actually say that depletion of a bacteria source would not be contributing to the stress on the fish. Offices do have temp variations and the water source he used had a ph of 5.4 according to the website. Bettas not coming to the surface indicates stress.
I doubt that for the first 4-6 months the fish was happy, changing all the parameters at once would certainly make it very unhappy. No matter what strange stories are out there keeping a tropical fish in a goldfish bowl is not good.

i think the UK has actually banned it