# Big mistake with ADA aqua soil



## NYREPS

Ok I had just gotten some rotala sp green to swap out with the giant baby tears for the background of my iwagumi tank ,when I took out the giant baby tears from the background of the tank everything was ok ,then when it came time for replanting the rotala green I had a major problem all my shirmp was going crazy and all my CRS and CBS turned pail and half of them died and all of my shrimp in the tank looks really sick and most of them are slowly dying ,so I bust out the test kit an found out there was an ammonia spike but it was only 0.50 since then I did 30% WC daily but my shrimp is still looking pretty bad this is my first time using ADA soil does this mean once I set up the tank with ADA soil I can't not touch it again ?what did I do wrong? Does anybody had experience with this problem? 

This tank had been setup for about 3 months and everything was fully cycled 

And the sad thing is I saw about 30-40 baby CRS I didn't know I had was going crazy in my tank them all must be dead !!! Now all my shrimp is bunched up in one corner 

So my question is ,is there a way to get all the toxic gas out underneath my soil or what ever it is that making my shrimp die so fast so it won't happen again?


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## Slingo

Can't answer your question on the Ada, but I recently experienced the same exact thing in a crs tank when adding a plant. Bought one of those tube plants from petsmart. Washed the plant added to tank and shortly after crs started acting weird, lot of movement and a bunch huddling in a corner. What I didn't realize was those plants are treated to kill snails and such. It also affects shrimp. Removed the plant and did a 50% water change which helped a lot. Only lost 3 shrimp out of 50 or so, but that was enough.

Not sure where you got your plant but just wanted to share.
Good luck... I know exactly how you feel.


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## totziens

What type of ADA soil? I personally dislike ADA Malaya and Africana. ADA Malaya gave me a lot of headache.

I am not so sure about shrimps but recently I am using recycled ADA Amazonia soil given along with a tank from my friend. The water has been murky for almost 3 weeks now. There is no impact on the fishes though. There are lots of tiny particles from the soil aka mud. Shrimps are always more sensitive. Originally, my friend has some shrimps (Yamato & CRS) in this tank too. Despite of the mess we did when tearing down everything in the tank, all of the shrimps survived but we gave them all away after they were kept in a pail for several days.

Are your new plants in emersed form? It's quite normal that we get emersed plants sprayed with some kind of insecticide/chemical from the farm/LFS in my country. The farm owner told us to soak the plants for a while (I cannot remember how many days) before putting them into the tank. Usually shrimps will be the first casualties if those plants are added straight into the tank.


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## bigstick120

Ive torn up aquasoil probably hundreds of times, never had that problem. A good practice is anything you tear up the tank moving or replanting is to do a water change after you are done.

As other suggested, maybe something was on the plant?

How deep is your AS?


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## NYREPS

The soil is Amazonia II ,5 inch in the back and 1 inch in the front and all the plants were placed in the back and you know what the plants that I got was from a guy on eBay he said he didn't have that much in the tank and I needed 50-60 stems so he told me he had some emerged form in pots and told me it will grow out as same as the sumarged form in a few weeks ,then when I got the plants I didn't even think of it just soaked for about 15 mins and put them in the tank I bet that's it that bastard spray some kind of stuff on the plants I bet,,,it's gotta be it now that you guys are telling me that you have turned the aqua soil over and nothing happen,,,,,goddammit !!!! Wtf was I thinking !!! Ok I will take the plants out in the morning and try to lots of WC and recover and see what happens.

Note :I had just purchased 250 shrimp today at aquabid 100 SS fire red shrimp,100 orange shrimp and 50 green shrimp from Taiwan it will be here next week I guess I will put them all in my 55g RCS grow out tank for now till I get this issue worked out.


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## NYREPS

Anyway back to the subject those are the shrimp that died so far 30 mins after I put in the plants








And all of them are either turned upside down with the flopping about to die and all bunched up in the corner 






















I'm sure I will fine more dead ones in the morning


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## barbgirl

Sorry for all your losses!  Being a beginner myself I am glad I saw this as I never really took rinsing and QT seriously. Will now!

That picture of the dead shrimp is heartbreaking :/

Sent from my MB865 using Tapatalk 2


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## wet

Dude, do larger and more frequent water changes. You know something is in the water and your daily 30% isn't cutting it. Calm down and get that crap out of the water. 

"When in doubt, water change. Then water change."
"The solution to pollution is dilution."


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## NYREPS

Yes I had been doing lots of WC with RO water ,I'm gonna do 30% twice a day for the next few days I also took the guys plants out lastnight 

Found 5 more dead shrimp this morning ,I'm just glad it wasn't the CRS ,it was only the RCS And yellow shrimp.


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## wet

I am bummed for your shrimp and hope looking at this another way may help.

Let's say I have 2.0 parts of "bad". Let's say 0.1 parts would probably kill me and my friends. 

Let's say I remove 30% of it. I have 1.4 parts bad. I remove another 30%. I have about 1 part bad. Then for some silly reason I wait another day. My buddy Alice and Bob are dead now and are adding their own bad to my system. Let's ignore that for simplicity.

I remove 30% of my original bad. Now I have 0.7 parts bad. I remove another 30% and am left with 0.5 parts bad. Oh, and Charlie and Denise are dead now, too. Oh well, time to wait until tomorrow.

I remove 30% of my original bad. Now I have 0.35 parts bad. I remove another 30% and have about 0.25 parts bad. I miss Erin and Frank, they were cool. 

So it's the next day and I remove 30% to be left with about 0.18 parts bad. Another 30% gets me to about 0.12 parts bad. George and Harry were cool too.

The next day I remove 30%. I am now safe and under 0.1 parts.

Alice thought we should have changed 70% of our original 2.0 parts of bad so we'd only have had 0.6 parts of bad. If we had changed another 70%, we would have been under 0.1 parts bad.

Your 30% isn't cutting it. You still haven't ruled out that, I don't know, there was some copper based algaecide applied to those plants at some point. You haven't effectively removed the junk from your planting and ruled that out. Your pets are still dying. Dude. Change more water or get the shrimp out of that tank. It'd be smarter to move the shrimp to your 30% container after getting it's water right..


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## NYREPS

Will do.


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## wolfewill

Newly added plants followed by shrimp deaths. Check out this link for another possible explanation. I just got a shipment from Singapore and had to quarantine, charcoal filter and raise the pH before adding the plants.

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co....stigates:_Shrimps_killed_by_mail_order_plants


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## K Randall

Wow! REALLY SCARY!!!


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## Texex94

That's really disturbing. I know that they need to "sterilize" the plants prior to shipping, but the chemicals they are using for "aquatic" plants are very nasty and powerful stuff. There's a reason I only by hobbyist grown plants....


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## NYREPS

So I found out it was the plants that killed all my shrimp 90% of my shrimp died .

That bastard must had sprayed some bug killing stuff on the plants with copper in it. 

He refunded me the money for the plants but killed over $100's worth of shrimp 

Since then I got new plants again and moved around the ADA soil and nothing happened ,all my new shrimp are fine 

Lesson learned !!!! Gotta QT everything you get from others ,and never buy emerged plants from people that's been sitting outside.

Tank is back to normal now !!!


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## h4n

wow thats crazy to hear!!


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## totziens

It's actually good to know whether a plant that you purchase is emersed or submerged. Normally submerged plants do not pose any problem. As for emersed plants, a lot of farms use pesticide. Even some hobbyists use them. It's very common to keep any new emersed plants soaking in a pail for a week or so before planting them in your tank (I am not sure how you can handle this in winter though). Some good LFS will be able to advise whether the plants contain pesticide or not.


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## wolfewill

wolfewill said:


> Newly added plants followed by shrimp deaths. Check out this link for another possible explanation. I just got a shipment from Singapore and had to quarantine, charcoal filter and raise the pH before adding the plants.
> 
> http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co....stigates:_Shrimps_killed_by_mail_order_plants


A good way to treat the plants if you suspect pesticide is outlined in the above article.

I also have just overhauled a tank with Africana and I was concerned I had made a mistake, too. But, contrary to the Amazonia aqua soils, Africana doesn't leach ammonia or nitrate into the water. There is a very small bit of nitrite, but nothing else. There is less plant nutrient though, and I have been advised by an ADA rep from California to fertilize the water column with N and P at start up. And this is contrary to the instructions suggested by the ADA literature supplied with the aqua soil which recommends waiting past the 1 year mark to dose with N and P. The sales rep who sold me the product didn't know about this anomaly either.


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## fishboykaps

Crazy!


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