Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Never lost a Tilapia in my fish tanks until now. The day before yesterday I added some Liquid Iron because my strawberries showed some yellow. First time I have done that. Shortly after I sensed that something is wrong with the fish. Today a bigger amount of them died. Did salt bath and changed major amounts of water. Any advice? Possible that the Liquid Iron (which I now realize contains some Bronon and Copper) caused the havoc?

I think copper is a no-no for fish.

Did your ph swing? Was it liquid iron or chelated iron? How much did you add? I found liquid iron made my ph drop quite radically, but it left (still don't know how) the water within 24 hours so I never got a "kill" from it.

What sort of liquid iron did you add?

I think you need Chelated Iron DTPA or EDDHA

Small amounts of Boron and Copper are ok, they are trace minerals.

A few things need to be known..

1. What type and brand of liquid iron
2. Total system water volume
3. How much did you add.

3rd day after the incident
Still some dead fish, but remaining fish seem to do better and recovering and feeding.
I used Bonide 'Liquid Iron + Micronutrients' from Amazon. Contains Boron (0.02%), Copper(0.25%), Zinc (0.5%). I used roughly 1 cup (250-300ml) per 800 litre tank.
Checked the water in both tanks today:
Nitrite is zero in both tank
Ammonium is 0.25 in both tanks
PH is 6.4 and 6.0
Nitrate is 5 and 20 (which is lower than last testing before incident)

Still pretty upset about the incident.

1 cup is a lot of liquid iron for 800L of water. Like anything with AP, only small additions to the system should be done over a period of time.

Yup. that's the same item I bought. (hope you didn't pay $107 for it!)

That doesn't work as well as chelated iron. It seems to get filtered out or used up very quickly. Or maybe it just settles? Chelated iron is different and stays suspended in the water longer.

I have no clue if this necessarily killed your fish. I didn't have any fish deaths (I had goldfish) after I treated with that stuff, but it did lower my ph for a day and then it bounced back up. That kind of ph swing can kill fish.

So it doesn't go to waste, this might work better as a folliar spray, and any small overspray into the FT shouldn't be too big a problem.

Using Nate Stories rate of 2mg per Litre of system water every 3 weeks, I figured you would need to add 32ml (=32grams) of the concentrate to the 800L system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qczagOJG5mI

might be a case of to much of a good thing?

..
Interested 'cause my strawberries are yellowing in one system..
1 cup would have been near 10 times the recommended dosage..
"Trace" would not be a word to use for that.. :-)
..
.

So it doesn't go to waste, this might work better as a folliar spray, and any small overspray into the FT shouldn't be too big a problem.

+1