HELP! ..:O Nitrite the lesser of 2 evils?

Mark Stone wrote:

Nitrite is the product of the breakdown of Ammonia, so the nitrite
spike following the ammonia spike is normal. Since your RDs are
already beyone juvi stage, there should be no danger to them as the
tank goes through this process: but as the ammonia and the
subsequently the nitrite spike, do some partials. In my experience,
establishing a tank takes about five weeks, dependent upon many
variables.

Umm, I'd have to disagree about them not being in danger. Nitrite
poisoning can occur at any age, even though juvenials are more suceptible
to it. The symptoms of lethargy would be consistent with nitrite poisoning
(aka brown blood syndrome or technically, methemoglobinemia). What happens
is the hemoglobin in the blood binds with nitrite (instead of oxygen)
creating methemoglobin, which cannot transport oxygen. Too much
methemoglobin and the fish literally suffocates because it cannot
transport enough oxygen in its blood. The first symptoms are lethargy, at
which point you usually can save most of the fish with some intervention.
If they reach the stage of gasping, they're usually goners unless you can
almost completely remove the nitrite through a 70%+ water change or
removal to a nitrite free tank (which in and of itself could stress the
fish into death, but it worth a shot rather than let them suffocate). Fish
respond individually to treatment of nitrite poisoning as well, depending
on their overall health. So, depending on how far it has progressed, you
may lose a few or save them all, but in any case, I'd do the following
immediately.

There are two main ways to deal with nitrite poisoing, massive water
changes and salt. The water changes have an obvious effect, diluting the
amount of nitrite in the water. If your tap water is close to the tank
water's parameters, change at least 25% if not 50% every day until you
bring the nitrites below 1ppm (I surely hope you have a water changer like
a Python or a really strong back for bucket lugging, heh). The chloride
ions in salt can prevent the uptake of nitrite in the gills, which
prevents it from entering the bloodstream and creating methemoglobin. With
a 220 gallon tank, I'd recommend adding rock salt (rock salt is pure
sodium chloride and easily found at a grocery store for much cheaper than
salt at the fish store. NOTE: You don't want table salt as it contains
additives) at the rate of about a tablespoon to 50 gallons to help ease
the symptoms of nitrite poisoning along with the water changes. This means
add about 5 tablespoons now and then if you change 100 gallons of water,
add another 2 tablespoons. Many recommend dissolving the salt in a cup of
water before adding it, which I would do with curious cichlids (with
smaller fish who couldn't eat the salt, I usually just evenly spread the
salt around the tank, but the one time I tried that with my cichlids, they
kept mouthing the pieces).

Cichlidiot wrote in message
...
Mark Stone wrote:

Nitrite is the product of the breakdown of Ammonia, so the nitrite
spike following the ammonia spike is normal. Since your RDs are
already beyone juvi stage, there should be no danger to them as the
tank goes through this process: but as the ammonia and the
subsequently the nitrite spike, do some partials. In my experience,
establishing a tank takes about five weeks, dependent upon many
variables.

Umm, I'd have to disagree about them not being in danger. Nitrite
poisoning can occur at any age, even though juvenials are more suceptible
to it. The symptoms of lethargy would be consistent with nitrite poisoning
(aka brown blood syndrome or technically, methemoglobinemia). What happens
is the hemoglobin in the blood binds with nitrite (instead of oxygen)
creating methemoglobin, which cannot transport oxygen. Too much
methemoglobin and the fish literally suffocates because it cannot
transport enough oxygen in its blood. The first symptoms are lethargy, at
which point you usually can save most of the fish with some intervention.
If they reach the stage of gasping, they're usually goners unless you can
almost completely remove the nitrite through a 70%+ water change or
removal to a nitrite free tank (which in and of itself could stress the
fish into death, but it worth a shot rather than let them suffocate). Fish
respond individually to treatment of nitrite poisoning as well, depending
on their overall health. So, depending on how far it has progressed, you
may lose a few or save them all, but in any case, I'd do the following
immediately.

There are two main ways to deal with nitrite poisoing, massive water
changes and salt. The water changes have an obvious effect, diluting the
amount of nitrite in the water. If your tap water is close to the tank
water's parameters, change at least 25% if not 50% every day until you
bring the nitrites below 1ppm (I surely hope you have a water changer like
a Python or a really strong back for bucket lugging, heh). The chloride
ions in salt can prevent the uptake of nitrite in the gills, which
prevents it from entering the bloodstream and creating methemoglobin. With
a 220 gallon tank, I'd recommend adding rock salt (rock salt is pure
sodium chloride and easily found at a grocery store for much cheaper than
salt at the fish store. NOTE: You don't want table salt as it contains
additives) at the rate of about a tablespoon to 50 gallons to help ease
the symptoms of nitrite poisoning along with the water changes. This means
add about 5 tablespoons now and then if you change 100 gallons of water,
add another 2 tablespoons. Many recommend dissolving the salt in a cup of
water before adding it, which I would do with curious cichlids (with
smaller fish who couldn't eat the salt, I usually just evenly spread the
salt around the tank, but the one time I tried that with my cichlids, they
kept mouthing the pieces).


Sounds like good advice to me.

I know nothing about Red Devils, but...

After a couple of days of 50% water changes, the fish will appear to be good
and healthy. You may be tempted to cut back on the water changes.

However, they won't have fully recovered from their ordeal. The Nitrites
will build up again and the fish will not give you as much warning as
before. The first thing you notice will be dead fish.

You must keep up the water changes until the tank has cycled completely.
And then you should still do twice weekly changes for a while.

Good luck.

Jim

Cichlidiot wrote in message ...

Umm, I'd have to disagree about them not being in danger.

I may have mis-typed: I meant that they would be in no danger during a
normal cycling process with the requisite water changes. I wasn't
referring to these particular RDs that are already in trouble. Sorry
about the misunderstanding--

--Mark

Thank you for your post Mark.
Thanks for all the info Cichlidiot...

They were just a bit lethargic last night for a few hours,
before I did the 25% water. They never got
close to the gasping stage. Anyhow, turns out it may not
be so bad, my nitrite kit tops out at 3ppm (really sensitive), and
it seems the tester was a shade under that last night so i estimate Nitrite
to be 2-3ppm. After the 25% water the fish reacted very positively
and were all swimming around this morning and evening
and eating fine. I will stop the feeding for a few days as you mention.
I just finished the 50% water this evening, they are now moving around
even more.

I'm using pickling salt (pure 100% salt no additives).
However I'm wondering about the dosage you recommend.
1 tablespoon per 50 gallons is 0.01%, isn't that too low?
I'm at the 1 tablespoon per 5gallons or 0.1% (10x the amount you recommend)
is that way over the limit? I read somewhere on the web that was fine for
RD's,
Goldfish can handle up to 0.3% with no issues, but i realized these fish
have
different needs. Anyhow with this latest 50% I'm at 0.05% (1
tablespoon/10gal) right now,
so I will leave it there until i hear from you again.

Seperate question;
What do you think of water softening salt like;
Swifto Brand "Crystal Plus" water softener salt
20KG bag (44lbs) for $3.50
Improved Resin Clean Formula
Inhibits Rust buildup and stains
99.8% Pure Evaporated Salt
Compacted for Maximum hardness
High Purity Brine reduces maintenance

Even though it's 99.8% pure, i'm not sure I should use it,
what do you think? My LFS uses something like that
for years and he swears by it.

....Kodiak

"Cichlidiot" wrote in message
...
Mark Stone wrote:

Nitrite is the product of the breakdown of Ammonia, so the nitrite
spike following the ammonia spike is normal. Since your RDs are
already beyone juvi stage, there should be no danger to them as the
tank goes through this process: but as the ammonia and the
subsequently the nitrite spike, do some partials. In my experience,
establishing a tank takes about five weeks, dependent upon many
variables.

Umm, I'd have to disagree about them not being in danger. Nitrite
poisoning can occur at any age, even though juvenials are more suceptible
to it. The symptoms of lethargy would be consistent with nitrite poisoning
(aka brown blood syndrome or technically, methemoglobinemia). What happens
is the hemoglobin in the blood binds with nitrite (instead of oxygen)
creating methemoglobin, which cannot transport oxygen. Too much
methemoglobin and the fish literally suffocates because it cannot
transport enough oxygen in its blood. The first symptoms are lethargy, at
which point you usually can save most of the fish with some intervention.
If they reach the stage of gasping, they're usually goners unless you can
almost completely remove the nitrite through a 70%+ water change or
removal to a nitrite free tank (which in and of itself could stress the
fish into death, but it worth a shot rather than let them suffocate). Fish
respond individually to treatment of nitrite poisoning as well, depending
on their overall health. So, depending on how far it has progressed, you
may lose a few or save them all, but in any case, I'd do the following
immediately.

There are two main ways to deal with nitrite poisoing, massive water
changes and salt. The water changes have an obvious effect, diluting the
amount of nitrite in the water. If your tap water is close to the tank
water's parameters, change at least 25% if not 50% every day until you
bring the nitrites below 1ppm (I surely hope you have a water changer like
a Python or a really strong back for bucket lugging, heh). The chloride
ions in salt can prevent the uptake of nitrite in the gills, which
prevents it from entering the bloodstream and creating methemoglobin. With

a 220 gallon tank, I'd recommend adding rock salt (rock salt is pure
sodium chloride and easily found at a grocery store for much cheaper than
salt at the fish store. NOTE: You don't want table salt as it contains
additives) at the rate of about a tablespoon to 50 gallons to help ease
the symptoms of nitrite poisoning along with the water changes. This means
add about 5 tablespoons now and then if you change 100 gallons of water,
add another 2 tablespoons. Many recommend dissolving the salt in a cup of
water before adding it, which I would do with curious cichlids (with
smaller fish who couldn't eat the salt, I usually just evenly spread the
salt around the tank, but the one time I tried that with my cichlids, they
kept mouthing the pieces).

Kodiak wrote:
Thank you for your post Mark.
Thanks for all the info Cichlidiot...

They were just a bit lethargic last night for a few hours,
before I did the 25% water. They never got
close to the gasping stage. Anyhow, turns out it may not
be so bad, my nitrite kit tops out at 3ppm (really sensitive), and
it seems the tester was a shade under that last night so i estimate Nitrite
to be 2-3ppm. After the 25% water the fish reacted very positively
and were all swimming around this morning and evening
and eating fine. I will stop the feeding for a few days as you mention.
I just finished the 50% water this evening, they are now moving around
even more.

This sounds good. They probably were suffering a bit from nitrite
poisoning and the lessening concentrations are helping. Try to keep at the
water changes until you get it below 1ppm though (or at least below 2ppm
if you can't get it any lower).

I'm using pickling salt (pure 100% salt no additives).
However I'm wondering about the dosage you recommend.
1 tablespoon per 50 gallons is 0.01%, isn't that too low?
I'm at the 1 tablespoon per 5gallons or 0.1% (10x the amount you recommend)
is that way over the limit? I read somewhere on the web that was fine for
RD's,
Goldfish can handle up to 0.3% with no issues, but i realized these fish
have
different needs. Anyhow with this latest 50% I'm at 0.05% (1
tablespoon/10gal) right now,
so I will leave it there until i hear from you again.

Well, I base this off some research I did which said the concentration of
chloride ions needed for helping nitrite poisoning is very low, in the
parts per million range. Since I usually have all my tanks planted, I try
to avoid adding too much salt and this dosage (well, actually closer to a
tablespoon in 40gal tank, since that was the one with the issue) helped
with my last case of nitrite poisoning. You can certainly add much more
safely if you're concerned and you have no plants. Just that you don't
always need quite so much salt as many webpages recommend to get a
beneficial effect for nitrite poisoning, heh. Many of those pages are
geared towards preventing paracites/disease like ich, so have a much
higher concentration of salt as a consequence.

While I'm thinking of my last case of nitrite poisoning, here's a
correlary piece of advice, consider it a cautionary tale. If you plan to
do any sort of vacation/travelling in the future, start to look for
someone now who is tank saavy, even if it means hiring a professional, to
keep an eye on your tank(s) while you are gone, particularly with a large
one like this tank. Don't rely on friends or family who don't know about
fish. I did and it was a complete disaster. I went to a conference (3 day
trip) and left my roommate to watch over the tanks (then just the 40g and
6g). Not only did she leave the AC off in 100+F weather (killing the whole
40g, 6g was just a betta so he survived the low water O2), she didn't
notice that the 40g filter intake was clogged up from the dead fish and
not flowing. So I lost the whole tank stock AND most of the bacteria
colony. I thought I had gotten it recycled fishlessly, but apparently only
got the ammonia colonies reseeded completely because I got a nitrite spike
(a bit over 1ppm) when I added 4 juvie calvus. Lost one in the process to
nitrite poisoning (they were in somewhat poor shape when I got them at
auction to begin with), but the rest recovered after a 50% water change
and some salt. But this was also a filter reseeding effort, so the nitrite
spike only lasted about a day since I already had some bacterial colonies,
just apparently not enough to handle the calvus. So moral of the story is:
roommates are evil, heh, and don't trust your tanks to novices. I've found
a professional pet sitter now who is a marine tank keeper. Worth the $20 a
day for her to visit to be sure I don't lose $200+ in stock.

Seperate question;
What do you think of water softening salt like;
Swifto Brand "Crystal Plus" water softener salt
20KG bag (44lbs) for $3.50
Improved Resin Clean Formula
Inhibits Rust buildup and stains
99.8% Pure Evaporated Salt
Compacted for Maximum hardness
High Purity Brine reduces maintenance

Even though it's 99.8% pure, i'm not sure I should use it,
what do you think? My LFS uses something like that
for years and he swears by it.

I'm not really familiar with the contents of water softening salt, so I
can't really say for sure if it would be safe or not. Probably wouldn't be
toxic or we'd be hearing a lot about deaths from people who fill the tank
from a tap that is on a water softener. I just don't have any use for that
much salt, so never looked into it. My 2lb box of rock salt from the
grocery store has lasted me over 2 years now, even using it for the brine
shrimp hatches, but I only have small tanks (40g, 29g, 10g, 6g) due to the
restrictions on tank sizes at my apartment complex.

Thanks for all the info, I have a freind who is a meticoulous
horticulturist.
I've gotton him to take care of my fish in the past. You scare me with the
AC thing though. I don't have AC. I live in Canada so it seldom gets above
90degF here but last summer my fishes were suffering for a few days.
I kept things in check by dropping alot of ice in the tank. That seemed to
help.

The fish got a bit lethargic again tonight, Nitrite hit 2-3ppm again, so i
did
another 50% water with a nice dose of dechlorinator. They are swimming
about again, but rechecking the nitrite levels after the 50%, don't seem to
go down. I had enough of this so i finally snapped tonight and took a media
bag of Lava rock out of my Goldfish tank and swapped it with the RD's.
Not sure i did the right thing with intermixing parasites, but my goldies
are
really healthy and I've had them for quite some time. There are no symptioms
of
any parasites on them, but i guess that would be hard to tell. Still i'd
rather have
no more nitrite in the tank, so I' took the shot. They seem very happy right
now,
I'll see how it goes tomorrow. Still ****ed about the Biostuff i bought,
what a waste
of money, and worries.

Again thankds for shareing your Nitrite spike and other experiences.

-
....Kodiak
"Cichlidiot" wrote in message
...
Kodiak wrote:
Thank you for your post Mark.
Thanks for all the info Cichlidiot...

They were just a bit lethargic last night for a few hours,
before I did the 25% water. They never got
close to the gasping stage. Anyhow, turns out it may not
be so bad, my nitrite kit tops out at 3ppm (really sensitive), and
it seems the tester was a shade under that last night so i estimate
Nitrite
to be 2-3ppm. After the 25% water the fish reacted very positively
and were all swimming around this morning and evening
and eating fine. I will stop the feeding for a few days as you mention.
I just finished the 50% water this evening, they are now moving around
even more.

This sounds good. They probably were suffering a bit from nitrite
poisoning and the lessening concentrations are helping. Try to keep at the
water changes until you get it below 1ppm though (or at least below 2ppm
if you can't get it any lower).

I'm using pickling salt (pure 100% salt no additives).
However I'm wondering about the dosage you recommend.
1 tablespoon per 50 gallons is 0.01%, isn't that too low?
I'm at the 1 tablespoon per 5gallons or 0.1% (10x the amount you
recommend)
is that way over the limit? I read somewhere on the web that was fine
for
RD's,
Goldfish can handle up to 0.3% with no issues, but i realized these fish
have
different needs. Anyhow with this latest 50% I'm at 0.05% (1
tablespoon/10gal) right now,
so I will leave it there until i hear from you again.

Well, I base this off some research I did which said the concentration of
chloride ions needed for helping nitrite poisoning is very low, in the
parts per million range. Since I usually have all my tanks planted, I try
to avoid adding too much salt and this dosage (well, actually closer to a
tablespoon in 40gal tank, since that was the one with the issue) helped
with my last case of nitrite poisoning. You can certainly add much more
safely if you're concerned and you have no plants. Just that you don't
always need quite so much salt as many webpages recommend to get a
beneficial effect for nitrite poisoning, heh. Many of those pages are
geared towards preventing paracites/disease like ich, so have a much
higher concentration of salt as a consequence.

While I'm thinking of my last case of nitrite poisoning, here's a
correlary piece of advice, consider it a cautionary tale. If you plan to
do any sort of vacation/travelling in the future, start to look for
someone now who is tank saavy, even if it means hiring a professional, to
keep an eye on your tank(s) while you are gone, particularly with a large
one like this tank. Don't rely on friends or family who don't know about
fish. I did and it was a complete disaster. I went to a conference (3 day
trip) and left my roommate to watch over the tanks (then just the 40g and
6g). Not only did she leave the AC off in 100+F weather (killing the whole
40g, 6g was just a betta so he survived the low water O2), she didn't
notice that the 40g filter intake was clogged up from the dead fish and
not flowing. So I lost the whole tank stock AND most of the bacteria
colony. I thought I had gotten it recycled fishlessly, but apparently only
got the ammonia colonies reseeded completely because I got a nitrite spike
(a bit over 1ppm) when I added 4 juvie calvus. Lost one in the process to
nitrite poisoning (they were in somewhat poor shape when I got them at
auction to begin with), but the rest recovered after a 50% water change
and some salt. But this was also a filter reseeding effort, so the nitrite
spike only lasted about a day since I already had some bacterial colonies,
just apparently not enough to handle the calvus. So moral of the story is:
roommates are evil, heh, and don't trust your tanks to novices. I've found
a professional pet sitter now who is a marine tank keeper. Worth the $20 a
day for her to visit to be sure I don't lose $200+ in stock.

Seperate question;
What do you think of water softening salt like;
Swifto Brand "Crystal Plus" water softener salt
20KG bag (44lbs) for $3.50
Improved Resin Clean Formula
Inhibits Rust buildup and stains
99.8% Pure Evaporated Salt
Compacted for Maximum hardness
High Purity Brine reduces maintenance

Even though it's 99.8% pure, i'm not sure I should use it,
what do you think? My LFS uses something like that
for years and he swears by it.

I'm not really familiar with the contents of water softening salt, so I
can't really say for sure if it would be safe or not. Probably wouldn't be
toxic or we'd be hearing a lot about deaths from people who fill the tank
from a tap that is on a water softener. I just don't have any use for that
much salt, so never looked into it. My 2lb box of rock salt from the
grocery store has lasted me over 2 years now, even using it for the brine
shrimp hatches, but I only have small tanks (40g, 29g, 10g, 6g) due to the
restrictions on tank sizes at my apartment complex.