# HELP!!!!! Nitrite spike in established tank after treating with MELAFIX



## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

So I awoke from my slumber this morning to find my fish gasping for air at the surface. I tested the water immediately to find the nitrite reading off the charts! The only thing I did was treat the tank the night before with melafix as I've been doing for the past couple of days for fungus on my German blue rams tail. I used the recomende dosage and haven't had any problems since i started...until now. But this stuf claims to not hurt the biological filter!? Apparently it does. So what do i do? Obviously stop treatment and i cant do anything till i get home from work today. Anybody else have bad exporiences with this stuff?


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

Actually it does not harm the bio-filter, have never personally had an issue, or heard of anyone having an issue with it. Was anything changed? Substrate, filter media, big bio load change, large plant mass change? I would look at that type of thing. If it was an established tank then there had to be a large upset for the bio-filter to get screwed up! Throw some prime in there and wait it out!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Nope. The melafix was the only thing done to the tank yesterday. I'm perplexed. I've been treating for 5 days and the fungus has gone away. I haven't noticed anything wrong until this morning. It's very very strange. I put in a crapload of prime as i was running out the door. Im gonna do a water change when i get home and see if any damage has been done.


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## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

Usually gasping indicates a lack of oxygen. The nitrate readings might be because something is decaying in your tank and has used up most of the oxygen in the process of decay. A water change is a good idea, but have a look around for areas of the substrate that might not have been cleaned in a while. Or for that matter anything large (snails/food/fish/shrimp/etc) that might have died.


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Well I always keep good surface agitation all the time to ensure enough oxygen is getting to the fish. its only a 29 gallon but I do have a heavy plantload in there. What I didn't think about is that there could be a decaying corpse hiding behind the plants. I'll have to do a thorough check of the tank. Thanks for all the help. I'll update when track down a cause


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Got home and tested the water and had a NITRITE reading of .25ppm. All fish are accounted for and not signs of decaying plants or food. Did a 75% water change and flushed out my eheim 2215. Still stumped on why the spike occurred in the first place. I wish I had some idea of what happened so i could avoid a scare like this in the future. Crisis averted for now


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

wow that is strange indeed. Zapins Idea was perfect, but if you dont have anything large decaying that is certainly a mystery! good to hear no one was lost. keep us updated!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Very strange indeed. thank you both for your help. I really appreciate it guys.


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Update : tested water this morning and still reading small amounts of nitrite. Still no losses but I don't know if any damage has been done. Been bombarding the tank with prime and doing water changes. Hope this ends in the next day or two. Still no cause found.


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## jgmbosnia1 (Apr 24, 2012)

I had the same exact thing happen in my 90g. I woke up one morning to find two dead fish and the rest were gasping at the waterline. I put the bubblers on full blast and everything was fine after an hour or two. I did some searches online to find that we aren't the only ones. Supposedly the Melaluca oil in the Melafix creates a fine oil layer on the surface not allowing for oxygen exchange at the surface. BTW this happened on my third day of treatment. I never checked for nitrates. Hmmm.


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

jgm that is an interesting theory that sounds very possible. I suppose when running Co2 and after enough doses you could effectively "seal" your tank preventing any gas exchange. Learn something new everyday!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Thank you. I'm happy someone found out something to make me feel like I'm not going crazy. As much success as people have had with this medication, I still believe it is the reason for this mini cycle. Today I checked the water and read no visible signs of either ammonia or nitrite. The fish are all fine and the water is much clearer (was cloudy do to a slight bacterial bloom). I honestly believed there was a dead fish but didn't find one. No decaying plants either. Never churned up the substrate so I was at a loss. I do keep good surface aggitation at night so the fish get enough oxygen but it is possible the foam layer at the top stopped the Exchange of oxygen. It even says on the bottle may cause a harmless foam......ha......harmless huh.


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

Still seems to be a strange situation, in my head anyway. A thin, oily film from the tea tree extract could effectively shut down the waters gas exchange ability which would kill fish due to lack of oxygen. Now, your ammonia and nitrite readings are strange in this scenario as the only way that could have happened with the oil film theory is the lack of oxygen killing off enough good bacteria to make levels jump enough to be toxic. Just a thought! Glad things worked out trigger!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Well I'm not going to touch the tank for at least a week just to make sure i dont screw any new bacteria up. Thanks everyone for your help


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## John LeVasseur (Feb 12, 2009)

Hello,

It is always a good idea to remove a sick fish from a tank and treat it separately in a "sick tank". Dosing a bio-system (which is how you must think of a planted tank) is risky. The bio-chemistry may be impacted in unpredictable ways.

These chemicals can react to your tanks particular unique chemistry. (Don't confuse the term chemistry used here as the talk about "chemistry" like with hardness and such) Every tank has a slightly different overall chemistry (both inorganic and living organic). This is due to many variables unique to your tank; your water sources, fertilizer choices & combinations, even ornaments, etc. Chemically, medicine treatments for diseases are highly reactive agents, it's how they work. They may have reacted with the micro-biology and other microscopic organisms living in your bio-system. These _may_ have (not saying they did) died en-masse from the Melafix and effected your nitrate levels. This may also account for the "film" you describe. A layer of dead and decaying microbes! Yuk!

Another possibility is it may have reacted with organic or inorganic chemicals in your system that may have produced nitrogen as a by-product, which would show up as nitrates in a test. They may have even produced Nitrates directly. It is hard to say for sure for anyone. Except maybe a micro-biologist with access to microscopes, spectrometers and such. Without you understanding fully (and that's not easy) your entire bio-system and all of its chemical & living biological components, predicting the effects of medical agents such as Melafix is dubious at best. It's best not to dose a tank with any medications. So ... be safe.

You should keep a small separate tank that you can set-up just to treat sickly friends, without affecting your other friends or your bio-system. One of those little 2 gal tanks and an air pump filter work great.

Just some advice...

John LeVasseur

I'm a Junior member? ... hurumph!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

No No No No.....so after having another spike right after my PWC yesterday afternoon i had a red flag thrown up right away. So now i knew something was seriously wrong.......and happy(not really) to say i found the problem, and it turns out to be worse than i thought. Something occured to me that never occured to me before. Test the tap water. And when i did I was shocked to find .5-1ppm of ammonia in my tap water!? this has NEVER been like this before. I do know that my area outside Philadelphia is currently going through a slight drought situation. we are 10 inches under the normal rainfall which we should be at right now. I have also heard that when droughts are in effect, water companys will treat the water whith extra chloramines (which is ammonia bonded to chlorine if im not mistaken) to prevent the water from stagnating. So my question is what the heck am i supposed to do now!? now im afraid to do water changes but i dont want to continue adding ammonia to my tank because a water change is all that will do. I heard aging the water might help? Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated. 

And thanks John LeVasseur. Turns out i was wrong and thats not the problem afterall.


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## jgmbosnia1 (Apr 24, 2012)

Wow....never heard of that one before. I hope it doesn't happen where I live. I don't think my county has been out of some sort of drought for the past couple of years. I'm not sure if a simple tap water filter would help you out or not. There are some pretty cheap RO units out there for sale.


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Yeah I was blown away when I looked at that vial after 5 minutes. I've been thinking about a RO/DI unit. But until I decide on that one I need to find a way to neutralize the ammonia in the tap water. I use prime but I wasn't sure if letting the water sit for a few days will help or just do nothing. will the chloromines or ammonia evaporate out of the water or does only chlorine evaporate and the ammonia remain?


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

Chlorine tends to precipitate out of water rather quickly. I dont see a problem with filling buckets (if you do it that way) and letting them sit a bit longer to allow the prime to work. If you dont do it the bucket way, dose prime then fill tank. Check out Seachem safe, its powdered prime, works wonders!


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

Pulled this info up quick. Hope it helps some!

http://freshaquarium.about.com/od/waterfaqs/f/faq0050.-5eR.htm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000DZDV80...e=asn&creative=395097&creativeASIN=B000DZDV80


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Wow awesome link man. Thanks alot. So what I'm thinking now is that they must be adding extra chloramines to the water because of this drought situation. So I've been slightly diluting my tap with distilled water for months. My question is should I just use more prime? I fill a five gallon bucket and than add about 5ml of prime and stir it up. That's my method and I've been doing it forever. So how am I still getting spikes? Shouldn't the prime be neutralizing the chloromines?


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

I've had this happen a few times in TX. I've had fish die in less than 5 minutes of a water change that were completely well before. I've thought about getting one of the BIG tank purifier filters that you run your water through. (I think ADG sells them.) Most of the time I'm fine. I have used extra prime and mixed with R/O water. The problem is that you never know WHEN the city does this. I'm at the end of a water line so I get more water crud build up than probably normal. We have an R/O for cooking and drinking.


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

EXACTLY! If they are going to overdose the crap out of our water with chloramines than they should let everyone know. And I live on the top of a hill above the schyukill river which is down the street. Our area is alot of limestone and my water out of the tap has a GH of 20. So now you see why I have been diluting my water with distilled right? So my tank is only a 29 gallon and I only do 5 gal changes a week. I estimate the water in my tank to be about 23-25 gallons of actual water with the gravel and plants. So I was thinking I could do my water changes every week with half distilled and half spring water until these levels go down in my tap. Only 5 gallons total. Do you think this will be fine for now?


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

Not a problem man, I actually learned some things myself! So instead of adding crazy filter systems, RO, D/I, etc etc why not simply dose more prime and let the bucket sit for a little longer than usual? Give the prime a little longer to break everything down and I would think you would be ok. I dose like this every time, just because it would be a major inconvenience to stay up to date with the city water contents. Another option for you that I was thinking of would be something along the lines of Ammo-lock or Purigen. I have used both and they work great. Only drawback to this situation is they may not work fast enough. Just throwing out some far cheaper options!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Never tried Ammo lock but It was suggested to me to never use it? If you've had succes with it than i wonder why i was told that. Is there any problems associated with it? What i do already use is purigen and it works great. It keeps my nitrates from climbing due to organics in the water. It helps me easily control the level of KNO3 I dose so i don't have to worry about them skyrocketing. Anyway I just did a PWC today with half distilled and half spring water. Everything is fine. So now what I'm going to do is fill the bucket with pure tap and put a crapload of prime in it and let it sit for two days than test the levels. if I'm not mistaken it wares off in 48hrs or is of 24?


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

I did use ammo lock for my fry tanks for awhile, i then found purigen and havent looked back! Did not notice anything odd with ammo lock, then again I didn't use it in a planted tank. You will more than likely get false readings if you dose prime then let sit as prime "locks" ammonia/nitrite/nitrate making it inert for fish but you will still see it in your tests. If you aren't opposed to the idea, dose and let sit as you suggested, then test with some cheap feeder fish after you let it sit. Some people arent into that though!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Hmmmmm. I just can't understand why than is the prime not working? Because as soon as I put that water treated with prime in my tank the problems begin. 2 hours later my fish are all gasping. Am I not using enough? Or is something happening when the treated tap water hits my tank water? Is this locking effect broken or is for some reason the chlorine ammonia bond broken and I'm left with pure ammonia? My pH when the co2 is running is about 6.2-6.3 if that counts for anything. Is this locked ammonia just more than my bio filter can handle?


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## Tex Gal (Nov 1, 2007)

There can be lots of reasons. You may need to use more Prime. There may be other chemicals in your water besides ammonia that Prime doesn't address. Prime will take care of ammonia. If it's just ammonia it's a matter of using enough prime. Have you tested your water out of the faucet? If you do you can see how much ammonia is in there and treat it accordingly. The bottle tells you how much ammonia the Prime treats at the recommended dosage.


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Yes. The ammonia reading straight out of the tap is about 1ppm. I never checked before and I've always used the same amount of prime. So clearly the level of ammonia in the tap water has increased over the last week to the point where my usual dose of prime is no longer enough. Or worse, whatever is in the water now, is no longer allowing the prime to work as effectively as it should, if it all. If that's even possible.


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

I would try Tex Gal's idea of adding more Prime, makes sense you may just need to use more. The bad part about that is you cant effectively test it with a kit, you would have to go off fish response. I have been thinking about this and I really dont think your problem is ammonia. The 1ppm out of your tap along with a sizeable dose in each of your buckets should certainly do the trick. Also, NH3-N or ammonia-nitrogen, is less toxic at lower ph levels where it is un-ionized NH3. As ph climbs its toxicity increases as it is now in an ionized form, NH4+. To add to that, temperature climbs also make ammonia more toxic. That being said, you may want to turn your attention to Heavy Metals in your water. I was curious about this in my water about a year ago and had someone from the water company come out and test my water. What followed was mind boggling! The levels of heavy metals from my sink, where I temp match the water, meaning some comes from the water heater, where at levels that no practical dose of prime would neutralize. Now the water from the outside garden hose faucet showed very manageable levels of heavy metals. Suffice it to say I now use the garden hose! Yes, there is a decent temp change and I have never noticed ill effects on the fish. I believe the temp change is FAR less taxing for them than massive amounts of Heavy Metals that I cannot fully neutralize. Thanks for reading, My rant is now over!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Haha I would use my gardwn hose if i didn't have to drag my full five gallon bucket up three floors to the bedroom. But what u said makes perfect sense since the fish all seem to start gasping when the co2 shuts off.....and the ph climbs. Wow great insight. I'm gonna try the more prime methos and keep you all posted. Thanks a lot guys.


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Now what you really have me thinking about is the heavy metal content of my water...now I'm afraid what I might find.


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## gr33nthumb (Oct 18, 2011)

The Trigger said:


> Now what you really have me thinking about is the heavy metal content of my water...now I'm afraid what I might find.


Haha! Well unless you live a fairly older building/house I don't believe you will have a huge issue. I'd say my complex was built sometimes in the 70's judging by materials used and construction techniques. Water pipes are certainly durable but a couple decades and I would certainly expect high levels of Heavy Metals. Thats the tricky part about this hobby, there are soooo many possible explanations to each problem. Thats also what I love about it! Keep us updated!


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## The Trigger (Apr 23, 2012)

Oh ok my house is only 4 years old Haha. But I will keep you all posted if i find out anything new


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