# just started ei, fish dying



## dbean (30 Jun 2013)

Hi guys I started this week on tuesday dosing a hardwater ei  kit I bought online using the guide for 400l tank and using the tad/tsp measurements it advised.. yesterday I got home and one of my angels was dead, today ive got a pale sick looking bleeding heart tetra, ive had the tank running for 4 months now with stock and had no signs of death or illness from any of the inhabitants.  Im sure I must be doing something wrong. My co2 is at approx 6  bps I cant have it much higher cause my loaches suffer.  Im seriously thinking of ditching the high tech approach and getting some java fern and anubias. 

I got the tnc ei kit from fluid sensor been dosing KNO3 KH2PO4 and trace eliments on alternate days


----------



## ceg4048 (30 Jun 2013)

Your fish death has nothing to do with EI.

Cheers,


----------



## dbean (30 Jun 2013)

Just a coincidence? I know the dry fertz are supposed to be harmless but could I not have over dosed the tank. Just seems a bit weird. 

I know i dont need a 2nd opinion with an answer from yourself, but is overdosing not a possibility? I did follow the guidelines but used the 400 - 600 guide. My tank isnt so heavily planted so ill drop to the 250 - 400 dosing.

please excuse by the way.. this has become a bit of duplicate thread as I was enquiring about a low tech tank earlier

but thanks ceg


----------



## ceg4048 (1 Jul 2013)

I guess if you were dosing in the 1000 ppm NO3 range there would be a problem, or, of you had salmon or trout then values below 100ppm would cause problems. There is no known toxic level for PO4. Trace elements do contain ionized metals such as Copper and Zinc but these values are very, very small in the dosing scheme. We never get anywhere near toxic levels. The lethal dose for guppy fry is somewhere around 800ppm NO3, depending on temperature.

There is too much empirical evidence to the contrary. Really, you'll need to look elsewhere for the cause. Look at the symptoms and see if it's possible to identify with known symptoms of pathogens. You do more damage to the fish by adding food to the tank than you do adding nutrients. It's not even close.

Continue to do frequent large water changes and reduce the CO2 injection rate as well as the lighting. The problem could have been cause 4 months ago if the tank was stocked to early. This is when most of the damage is done and the fish die later from injuries suffered when they fall victim to poisoning from an immature tank. There are lots of ways to kill fish. Dosing per EI is not one of them.

Cheers,


----------



## ian_m (1 Jul 2013)

Due to equipment timer failure I ended up dumping 1litre of 1 1/2 strength EI macro solution into my 180l tank and ended up with 200-250ppm NO3 with no fish or algae issues.

Aquarium Fert Dosing | UK Aquatic Plant Society


----------



## geoffbark (1 Jul 2013)

Are you maybe gassing them? Too much CO2 or not enough O2, surface agitation!


----------



## jjl (27 Feb 2014)

Hi there - I started my EI regimen on Monday and have come home to two dead cichlids and a dying betta albimarginata. 

I understand that EI empirically doesn't harm fish but this seems statistically significant. We haven't had a fish death in months and now three. CO2 is turned down to less than 20 so I'm not gassing them. Additionally, they're all suffering from clamped fin before death, which is indicative of poor water quality. The water was fine before... 

Would love some guidance. Thanks


----------



## ceg4048 (28 Feb 2014)

Well you're definitely doing something wrong because statistically, everyone else on this forum dosing EI do not have fish deaths attributable to nutrient loading. Statistically, there are thousands of people not dosing who have fish deaths with clamp fins, so there is no way your problems are attributable to EI. That's for sure. You need to look elsewhere, and quick because you are looking under the wrong rock and while you are wasting time doing that the real culprit will still be killing your fish.

Poor water quality has nothing to do with nutrient levels and has everything to do with poor Oxygen levels, so you need to look at your water change schedule as well as your CO2 levels. I have no idea what "less than 20" means, but CO2 is 1000X more toxic to fish than nutrients could ever dream of being.

If you can give more information regarding you water change schedule, feeding habits, CO2 methods, temperature and so forth it would help the troubleshooting.

Cheers,


----------



## jjl (28 Feb 2014)

Gladly Ceg and thanks so much. I fully ascribe to the theory behind EI and your posts have gotten me out of many a jam.

*Tank*

240L mature, lightly stocked and medium planted tank
CO2 kept at 20-25 mg/L. Run through an up inline diffuser and out through spraybars back to front (which I think you suggested and works beautifully)
5x filtration and 6x flow
Lighting consists of 2x 39w T5 bulbs 
Temperature at 78F
PH hovers around 7.0-7.2
*Dosing*

30% water change on Sundays (of which a third is RO)
EasyCarbo 10mL daily
Alternating Macro / Micro EI solution.  We're using the UK Aquatic Plant Food Recipes (Ei Starter Kit). I can't tell you how many mg a day I'm dosing (since I don't know the exact molecular weights of their mix and made the mix volumetrically) but it seems like a pretty standard composition and I'm dosing 45ml per day of the 500ml macro and micro solutions on alternating days.
I know you don't ascribe *any *merit to hobbyist test kits but my nitrates test is reading 80ppm out of the tap (Delicious, sweet London Thames Water) and were 100+ in the tank before I started dosing macros.

*Fish*

*Feed *1/2 a tab of frozen glassworms and an algae tab every now and again. Food is gone within a couple of minutes.
My hard water fish are doing fine (panda garra, gobies etc) since we started EI this week. It's the soft water fish (betta albimarginata and cichlid trifasciata) that are getting sick (we found another dying cichlid). These guys are really sensitive to nitrates. The fish are floating at the surface with what look like swim bladder issues and clamped fins before fading away and dying. No ich, velvet, sores, ulcers etc.
What do you suggest? Maintain the status quo? Buy an expensive test kit to find out the true nitrate ppm? Thanks again - really appreciate your wisdom and time


----------



## Rob P (28 Feb 2014)

jjl said:


> Gladly I know you don't ascribe *any *merit to hobbyist test kits but my nitrates test is reading 80ppm out of the tap (Delicious, sweet London Thames Water) and were 100+ in the tank before I started dosing macros.





			
				DEFRA said:
			
		

> The first legal standard for nitrate was set in 1980 and the current drinking water standard is 50 mg/l. This EU standard is based on the World Health Organisation's guideline value for drinking water, which is also 50 mg/l. This level is intended as a safeguard against methaemoglobinaemia.



Doesn't look good for the test kit does it!


----------



## ceg4048 (28 Feb 2014)

Yeah, the European limit for tap is 50ppm so there is no way the kit is telling you the truth. It's a waste of time.

Also there is no way those fish are sensitive to inorganic nitrate addition. I suggest that you start doing massive water changes, like 60% or greater, and do it several times a week. There is some toxin or pathogen in the water. Vacuum the substrate when you do the water change as well. Clean your filter also.

Cheers,


----------



## jjl (28 Feb 2014)

Cool - I'll do those things and keep up with the EI. Thanks again


----------



## Phil Edwards (13 Mar 2014)

In the past my fish routinely ate the dry salts I dumped into my tank.  From technical grade all the way up to ACS reagent grade materials, nothing ever died from eating grains of stuff.


----------



## tim (13 Mar 2014)

Worth noting Thames water may be adding chloramine as well as chlorine at the moment due to floods etc etc, are you using dechlorinator that neutralises both.


----------



## jjl (14 Mar 2014)

Hi - we use stress coat to dechlorinate, which should be helping.

To follow-up on my earlier post, we followed Ceg's advice and did a bunch of 60% water changes while keeping up with the EI and no new fish have gotten sick. I guess we'll never know what caused it... 

A couple of theories are that (a) house was painted two weeks prior to the first fish death - and it was the anabantoids that were most affected and (b) we had just started doing RO not too long before and didn't 'flush the filter' for the first time

Anyway, thanks for all your help. In EI we trust.


----------



## tim (14 Mar 2014)

Well API States you need stress coat plus or chloramine can be converted to ammonia.


----------



## NatureBoy (15 Mar 2014)

My only concern would be whether the step up in nitrates are finding their way not to the plants but down one of the metabolic pathways that lead to ammonia, such as partial denitrification...entirely possible


----------



## ceg4048 (16 Mar 2014)

Well, allay your concerns, because fortunately for us, it's entirely impossible. There are no metabolic pathways that convert NO3 to NH3 in fish. In plants, yes. In fact, this is how plants use NO3, they must first turn it into NH3. When plant pull NH3 from the water or soil, they must either use it immediately or store is by first converting it to NO3. Otherwise it builds quickly to toxic levels internally.

In fish there are however, pathways that reduce NO3 to NO2. That happens to be the way in which NO3 toxicity affects fish. Their bodies convert it to NO2 and that is toxic. If you are keeping trout or salmon in your tank then yes, they are very sensitive to that so you'd have to worry about dosing NO3. If you have tropical fauna then you don't have to worry about this at all.

As we have demonstrated over time, dosing EI levels of NO3 does not generate toxicity. So the metabolic pathway that occurs in the tank, which, by an overwhelmingly large margin, produces NH3 toxicity in tanks around the world, is that of adding food to the tank combined with not performing sufficient water changes.


Cheers,


----------



## NatureBoy (16 Mar 2014)

there are entirely possible bacterial metabolic processes that can reduce nitrate to ammonium


----------



## ceg4048 (17 Mar 2014)

If this happens then the nitrifying bacteria immediately reverse the process. That's why they are called nitrifying bacteria, because they turn NH3/NH4 into NO3. That's why we cultivate them, right?

Also worth noting is that the aerobic bacterial denitrification of NO3 does NOT yield NH3/NH4, but rather Nitrogen gas, which is not toxic and which is returned to atmosphere.

The process is usually something like; NO3-->NO2-->NO-->N2O-->N2.

Dissimilatory Nitrate Reduction to Ammonium (DNRA) typically happens in sediments which are LOW in Oxygen and LOW in NO3, which is the opposite of our situation, generally. It is an alternate Nitrogen fixing mechanism normally associated with anaerobic sediment activity. Furthermore, not only would this occur primarily in the sediment and not in the water column, but the end product would be NH4+ which is much less toxic. The NH3 equilibrium would obviously depend on the soil pH, so if it's acidic then the NH3 component would be small.

In any case, there is plenty of NH3/NH4 in sediments because of fecal and other types of waste being broken down.

So, if this type of bacterial DNRA activity is occurring in your tank's water column, then I guarantee that you'll have a hell of a lot more to worry about than NO3 concentration increase due to EI.

Cheers,


----------



## niru (17 Mar 2014)

A few weeks back, 1 of my red nose tetra drank liquid carbo after i had put in a cap or 2 near a bba infected leaf. This was during a WC. So water level was low. Poor chap died overnight. So bad things do happen in "ei" tanks, but its not ei....

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk


----------

