Murder mystery

verbal

CCA Members
One and a half cap full per 10 gallons. If not a parasite, then I'm thinking the rain from last week caused some cross contamination in the water... only explanation I can think of. Lost some beautiful males and a proven breeder female. :(

Are you dosing to new volume water or the tank capacity?

I think it is one cap(5mL) of prime per 50 gallons. 2 to 3 caps on 75 would be fine, but 10+ could cause issues.
 
New volume. Usually 1 to 2 Caps per water change. I know it's high but I tend to over stock my tank and several pepper told me to increase the dose years ago. The dose hasn't changed tho, been doing the same for years
 

mchambers

Former CCA member
According to Seachem, when putting Prime or Safe into the tank, you dose for the whole tank. You only dose for volume of new water if you are adding the dechlorinator to the new water before adding it to the tank.

I still don't think this explains your deaths, however, if you only did a 10% change. Doesn't seem like that would lead to enough Chloramine to kill so many fish.
 

dhavalsp

Members
Sorry for your loss, Tarun.

We had a water break in our area, i will refrain from doing water changes for few days.
 

Frank Cowherd

Global Moderators
Staff member
double the dose of prime or amquel plus will kill fish but it takes over 18 hours to do so and you can revive them if you put them in new treated (at the right level) water when you see them acting strange.

More than double the right dose probably kills a lot quicker.

SO if you used 7 and a half caps full of Prime to a 50 gallon tank, that could be the cause.
 

verbal

CCA Members
SO if you used 7 and a half caps full of Prime to a 50 gallon tank, that could be the cause.

It sounds like it ends up being 1 or 2 capfuls for a 50 to 100 gallon tank.

I learned the hard way about the effects of 7.5 caps of prime or something similar when I first used it. Have been careful/lucky not to make that mistake since.
 
SO if you used 7 and a half caps full of Prime to a 50 gallon tank, that could be the cause.

It was a 10% water change. .. it was about half a cap per tank that I added to the water bucket before putting the water in the tank. It's still a high dose. ..guess water here IS different than in Chicago. I've used that dosing for years and never had a die off.

I'm just going to hope I can blame the water company for $450 in dead fish.
 

mchambers

Former CCA member
Yeah, but

Wish I could work out a rainwater collection system so I didn't have to worry about this stuff.
If you're keeping lake Africans, as I think you are, you'd have to add all sorts of stuff to the rainwater to make it suitable for them. And then you'd have to worry about times like the last two or three months when we don't have much rain!
 
If you're keeping lake Africans, as I think you are, you'd have to add all sorts of stuff to the rainwater to make it suitable for them. And then you'd have to worry about times like the last two or three months when we don't have much rain!

I get that part. I just figure there's less chance of contamination.
 

mchambers

Former CCA member
Maybe. But some folks will say that there is the danger of air pollution affecting the quality of rainwater and also whatever comes off your roof.

Mind you, I use rainwater when I can in my South American tanks and I haven't had any problems.
 

festaedan

potamotrygon fan
So sorry! This happened to me a while ago. It was actually what killed my first stingray.
Still have no idea what happened
 
Why not get a chlorine test kit to check the tap water before doing WC. The same pool test kit should work fine to guard against unexpected chlorine/cloramine spike
 

F8LBITE

Members
Wow thats sucks man. I would be devastated. Just about 3 weeks ago I did a 50%WC and dosed with prime and lost 5 Syno Petricolas. Those were the only fish affected.The other 6 petricolas in the tank are fine.
 

dogofwar

CCA Members
I used Prime for many years before switching to powdered dechlor/amine (Chloram-X and more recently Safe or powdered Prime).

Adding several caps of Prime to a 50g bucket is many times more than needed...but adding water from a bucket with ~6-7 times the dose of Prime to 10% of the tank shouldn't cause a problem.

Seachem says that you can use up to a 5X dose (see below).

Use 1 capful (5 mL) for each 200 L (50 gallons*) of new water. This removes approximately 1 mg/L ammonia, 4 mg/L chloramine, or 5 mg/L chlorine. For smaller doses, please note each cap thread is approx. 1 mL. May be added to aquarium directly, but better if added to new water first. If adding directly to aquarium, base dose on aquarium volume. Sulfur odor is normal. For exceptionally high chloramine concentrations, a double dose may be used safely. To detoxify nitrite in an emergency, up to 5 times normal dose may be used. If temperature is > 30 °C (86 °F) and chlorine or ammonia levels are low, use a half dose.

I've been using these products for years and - I'm sure - routinely overdosing by not measuring / just adding a pinch to each tank before re-filling. I'm also sure that I routinely add an extra pinch to tanks that I've forgotten whether I've added dechlor or not... I don't have chloramine (only chlorine) but I can't recall a situation in which I've had a problem (and certainly not a mass die-off) as a result of over-dosing Prime (Safe or Choram-X).

Seems like there was something in the tap water that day that usually wasn't there. Could you call your water authority and ask if they were doing something different that day (and whether there's some place that they post that kind of info)?

Matt
 
Another neighbor lost several fish. Chalking it up to the water but going to watch my prime dosage as well. The carnage is more than I'm willing to bear
 
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