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Wipe Out

hotweldfire

hotweldfire

Member
Joined
23 Mar 2011
Messages
971
Location
South London
A cautionary tale for y'all. Total loss in main tank although there are three blue pearls huddled together in the back corner fanning their legs like mad and I've pulled out one crystal that isn't dead but is preferring to lie on its side. All others including crystals up to ss grades and taiwan hybrids gone. Even amanos.

Def lost some snow bees and sakuras from nano. Caught the problem there earlier so a water change may have saved some. We'll see.

The cause? Well, I put some new plants in last night. If it was them then almost certainly copper poisoning as all fish fine. Despite plants soaking all day yesterday. I'm not saying it was them (as that might be libellous) but they went in to both tanks and nothing else was changed or was added.

£300-400 worth of livestock I reckon. Not to mention the potential breeding value. Taiwan hybrids after all.

The moral is you can't prep plants enough.

Will update later after communicating with the supplier. Here are some horror pics in the meantime.

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That's such a shame mate I bet you are really upset, I know I would be. I just wondered how did new plants release copper into the tank? Were they in a tank which had a high copper content or something?
 
Mate, I'm not uspet. I'm absolutely fuming.

A lot of suppliers use treatments containing copper on their plants as the copper kills pest snails. I know this supplier uses a bath before sending the plants out. Don't know what's in it, never thought they'd use copper, but whatever it is has to be pretty toxic for it to have this effect.

I assumed a three hour soak in carbonated water followed by two hours in prime followed by one hour in ro would remove everything but clearly not. I should have run them under flowing tap for an hour like I usually do.
 
thats worrying you prep your plants 1000x more than I do I normally just rince in tap water then stick in

considering I stick them in with some rather expensive fish a wipe out could be expensive 🙁 can you pm me the supplier so I can avoid?
 
Hi all,
Not very nice, does sound like it might be copper poisoning, or possibly a synthetic pyrethroid insecticide like permethrin, these pesticides would be toxic at very low values (possibly even ppb).

I'd definitely take any foam/rock wool off before putting the plants in the tank, as that is the most likely reservoir for any pollution.

I think Prime contains EDTA, but that would be the only other thing I could think of to do (other than the things you have done), and this is add a 24 hour soak in a dilute NaEDTA solution. Sodium (Na) is the least tightly bound metal and copper (Cu) would definitely displace it binding any copper ions as CuEDTA (as long as there weren't iron ions (Fe3+) in solution as well)

An organic chelator (like peat or Indian Almond leaves) might do as DOC (dissolved organic carbon) chelates heavy metals as well, but ligand formation is quite slow so you would need to soak for at least 24 hours.

cheers Darrel
 
Feel for you dude, I've had this happen to me twice after adding plants imported from the far east. Took a month of running every chelating and absorbing agent I could find to get the tank shrimp safe again.

Darrel's advice sounds very good though, I'd run with that.
 
I had something like this happen with me, but only with cherries.

Even if one buys from tropica be extra careful if the retailer has a mix of plants on their holding tank.

The shop I go to in london has shrimp on the plant holding tanks, proof that the plants are safe.

It is a true tragedy mate.


___________________________
 
BigTom said:
Feel for you dude, I've had this happen to me twice after adding plants imported from the far east. Took a month of running every chelating and absorbing agent I could find to get the tank shrimp safe again.

Darrel's advice sounds very good though, I'd run with that.
Click to expand...

Thank you mate. Is hard to describe how depressing it is for this to happen. Have built this collection of shrimps over a period of a year and was about to develop into a very high quality colony. For it to be wiped out by someone else's carelessness is pretty devastating. Am unlikely to be able to afford all these high grade shrimp again.

dw1305 said:
Hi all,
Not very nice, does sound like it might be copper poisoning, or possibly a synthetic pyrethroid insecticide like permethrin, these pesticides would be toxic at very low values (possibly even ppb).

I'd definitely take any foam/rock wool off before putting the plants in the tank, as that is the most likely reservoir for any pollution.

I think Prime contains EDTA, but that would be the only other thing I could think of to do (other than the things you have done), and this is add a 24 hour soak in a dilute NaEDTA solution. Sodium (Na) is the least tightly bound metal and copper (Cu) would definitely displace it binding any copper ions as CuEDTA (as long as there weren't iron ions (Fe3+) in solution as well)

An organic chelator (like peat or Indian Almond leaves) might do as DOC (dissolved organic carbon) chelates heavy metals as well, but ligand formation is quite slow so you would need to soak for at least 24 hours.

cheers Darrel
Click to expand...

Darrel, as ever thanks for the advice. However, would you mind breaking it down for me a bit? What specifically would I need to do other than chucking some Prime into the tank? There's always some iron in there as a result of ferts.
 
Hi all,
What specifically would I need to do other than chucking some Prime into the tank? There's always some iron in there as a result of ferts.
Click to expand...
I'd try and treat the plants before they went into the tank. I think if you take the weight and foam off, there isn't much that can retain any pollutants. I'd then soak plants in a separate container of water containing the EDTA/Indian Almond leaves for at least 24 hours. I'd use either RO, or a sparkling bottled mineral water with out any iron in it. If they were mosses I might leave them in a bit longer. You won't need much NaEDTA, 15ppm would be more than enough (that would treat 5 ppm Cu).

cheers Darrel
 
Gutted mate. I'm sorry to hear this m I think I know which supplier you got from and believe your not the first to suffer this. I stick to just buying from TGM and ae now. Less risk as they have there plants in their own grow tanks.
Sorry for your losses mate I know it doesn't help and can't replace what's gone. I believe the supplier should be held responsible and compensate your losses.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'm feeling your pain, I have lost V Expensive Discus I couldn't afford but always wanted by a kid putting something in my tank it's not nice at all.

I know very little about the chemicals you mention but does aqua safe or similar products not remove metals from water and have you tried filtering with carbon to remove nasties from the shrimp tank? possibly clutching at straws just trying to help :cry:
 
Sorry to hear this. Been through the same myself although on a much smaller scale. Bought some plants off ebay and within 5 mins of going into the tank the shrimp started to keel over.

I managed to save a few from what was a decent colony of breeding snowballs, but even the survivors were not the same after. They stopped breeding and died off one by one over the following weeks.

Bummer, but very hard to hold supplier accountable unless they guarantee to be shrimp safe plants with no ferts or pesticides.
 
I'm gutted for you, genuinely! I once had my 2 yr old daughter pour perfume in my high grade CRS tank, i lost about 200 of them! People say toothache is the worst pain in the world, i disagree, losing shrimp is worse!
 
Hi,

Sorry to hear this story. Ones again a lesson for all of us. I`d not blame the seller. I was working for a retailer in Belfast and Im sure there was plenty of green fertiliser in wool rock Tropica`s plants, so please do not say that they are safe. You always must rinse any bought plant few times before adding to the shrimp tank. People buy amazon swords and plant them with the wool for some reason... when You must keep the wool then must rinse the wool few times.
 
zvirus said:
Hi,

Sorry to hear this story. Ones again a lesson for all of us. I`d not blame the seller. I was working for a retailer in Belfast and Im sure there was plenty of green fertiliser in wool rock Tropica`s plants, so please do not say that they are safe. You always must rinse any bought plant few times before adding to the shrimp tank. People buy amazon swords and plant them with the wool for some reason... when You must keep the wool then must rinse the wool few times.
Click to expand...

A simple rinse is never going to be enough if the plants have been treated with the kind of highly toxic pesticides that I am beginning to suspect are commonly used by growers in the far east. I have read enough of these exact same stories to think that many resellers of far eastern plants must be aware that their products carry risks for shrimp. You would hope that they would carry warnings to this effect on their websites, but obviously that would be bad for business.
 
Hi all,
out of interest where would you get sodium edta from in the UK?
Click to expand...
Should be widely available as it is used in food, pharmaceuticals, labs etc because Na is the least tightly bound ion and you can make FeEDTA with it etc.
"MistralNI" sell it <http://www.mistralni.co.uk>, but you might be able to get it from EBAY, just checked you can buy it pretty cheaply from "home_and_hobby_chems".

cheers Darrel
 
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