[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Avoid adding seaweed fertilizers
I think I am emerging from my denial phase regarding the death of my
loaches and coming to grips with my bad judgment. This little indiscretion
I am about to describe has caused the death of many old loaches. While I
am a plant nut, my fish of choice are loaches and I have been keeping them
together for years. I'll admit the relationship is imperfect, the loaches
seem to get the better half of the stick. I mean the plants uptake of fish
waste and have provided the fish with an excellent environment for
years. Along with that clean water, my swords provided, the loaches
specifically, with hours of leaf popping fun. Anyway, this aquatic
playground all came crashing down one day this past summer ('00) when I
screwed up. While I was outside tending to the gardens I had an idea. I
had thought of this on a few occasions before, but discounted it for the
fear of the unknown. I had a nice bottle of organic "wonder potion" that
will revive the most pathetic of plants. If it's so good on the stuff in
my yard why not try a little on the plants in the tank! Damn if I hadn't
talked myself out of this the few times in the past, but in the moment of
weakness or daring, I went for it. The solution was an organic form of
trace elements, an elixer of sorts, the extract of kelp. Hell, take a ton
of kelp, make a kelp tea and then reduce it to a concentrate, what a good
booster for the common house plant. Add a teaspoon of this liquid plant
life to a 90 gal plant tank, and well, it was certain death for my
loaches. Within a day or two they ALL developed Ick! Now I am sure there
are a few of you here shaking your heads saying, of course it does. If I
had erred on the side of caution like I had done so many times in the past,
I too would be shaking my head today listening to this from someone
else. But this time I did it, and there is the stress indicator! I
quickly did water changes, added carbon and did more changes. I feed them
medicated foods, and did more water changes, but to no avail, they are all
gone, Clows, Botia rostrata, and B. striata. Surprisingly enough, through
all this pain, not a lick of stress in the other fish. I have a 4 year
old Farlowella no issue, a trio of panda cory, still spawning to this day
even the ottos are fine. There are two bristle nose plecos, a plekolota,
an angelfish, and a 3 year old hummingbird tetra that all made it through
this onslaught of heavy metals. I did however loose 2 of my 4 year old
SEAs while one of them managed to survive. I was surprised at what
happened and then again I was annoyed that I could be so stupid. I am
writing this to get it into the archives, that it is a bad idea to add
Liquid Kelp Concentrates to your plant tanks if you have fish in
there. Without a little more research into the root cause I will place
this very high on the "never do" list. During all that death, I paid
little attention to the health of my plants. I never noticed any
appreciable improvement, and I know they look none the worse for ware. I
would say that, understanding loaches to be a particularly sensitive
species, if the application of kelp stressed them to the point of ick, then
I am sure it was a load on the other fish as well. It has been said that
Botia are sensitive to Copper and I know there is Cu in the elixer, maybe
that was at to high of a level for them. Maybe it was Cu and another
metal, maybe it's a bunch of them I am unsure. I am relatively confident
that the kelp was the primary environmental change that brought on the
ick. My water parameters all were within normal ranges, and the
temperature stable, also my pressurized CO2 setup was producing with normal
parameter. I am not going to try it again in an attempt to disprove my
supposition, but anyone else is welcome to prove me wrong:) I will stick
to my normal PMDD mix and leave the kelp for outdoor use.
Thanks for listening,
Jeff(JD)