Effects of high phos and nitrates on fish

[chastjw71]

I broke down a tank with extremely high Phosphates 2.5 on hanna, (could be higher as 2.5 max on Hanna) and over 100 nitrates.
in the tank were 4 fish, yellow tang, powder blue, hawk fish, and perc clown, along with a carpet anemone and snowflake eel.
I transfered all animals to my house, to an all ready set up quarantine tank, all samples well in normal range, 2 nitrates and 0.03 phos. I aclimated for 2 hours in buckets. next day all fish were dead, eel seems fine and anemone is open and looking good.

I was more worried about the eel and anemone then the fish but apparently I was wrong? Do you all think this was do to the high Phos, Nitrates? or something else possibly???

 

[Krish]

Fish can tolerate quite a bit of nitrates. Never really knew what affects phosphates had on them, but if they were fine in the high nitrate and phosphate water and only died after being transferred then maybe it could be due to the acclimation procedure you used. How did you acclimate them? Also, what about salinity levels, ph, temp etc? Were they all the same between the two tanks? They could have been just extremely stressed over the move. Also, did you test for ammonia and nitrite in the new tank they were transferred into? Let us know....

Sorry to hear of your losses. Hope the others do fine.


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[chastjw71]

All other peramiters were equal. 0 ammonia salinity same temp same ph same. Acclimated in separate buckets adding the new tank water to buckets till doubled then remove half repeat.

 

[Krish]

That's strange. They must have been stressed out. I will move the thread over to Lee's forum to see if maybe he can add some insight to the subject.


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[leebca]

Sorry to hear of this disaster.

Speaking in generalities, phosphates and nitrates don't adversely affect ornamental marine fishes. However, this doesn't mean that there isin't some top end threshhold where these fishes just can't handle it. Studies have shown that different species can tolerate different high levels of nitrates. Over their particular level and they are affected. The very large majority of those fishes studied could tolerate up and include 200 ppm nitrates. Higher than that and some species do in fact have some troubles.

I am not aware of any studies done with phosphates. However, I am also not aware of any reports that 'high' phosphates pose a problem for the ornamental marine fishes.

I would safely say that it wasn't likely that these two components were the problelm. But the fact that they were high does indicate poor water quality in general. By this I mean, there easily could be other things/components in their water, of high concentrations that these fishes had 'adapted to' and in some way, accomodated the poor water quality.

As my own experiement many years ago, I setup and operated a 100 gallon aquarium. After a year, i stopped making water changes and stopped all chemical water treatment. The tank had no skimmer. The fish inhabitants were a cross of butterflyfiishes, baby Tang, and dwarf Angel. After 18 months of this situation, the fish were moved to different tanks. All the tanks they were moved to were properly maintained (water changes, chemical filtration, etc.). All but one of those fishes died after proper acclimation to their new tanks, within 48 hours.

If you review this post: http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/f15/what-water-quality-27575/ you'll find its point is that what we test for in the water is only a fraction of the chemicals actually in the water and doesn't include any type of poisons, contamination, etc. that might have found there way into the water.

Bottom line: In my opinion, if the phosphates and nitrates were that high, then the water quality was not being maintained properly. The fish had adapted to the poor water quality. No amount of normal acclimation to a new tank water could ween them from what they had come to expect in the poor water, and they died.

 

[TJL]

Lee, thanks for your input here and somewhat confirms what I have come to believe as have seen/heard of this type of fish loss several times over the years. Unexpected fish loss going into what should have been MUCH BETTER water conditions all the way around then wondering what adaptations the fish had become dependant on ???

Cheers, Todd