The Planted Tank Forum banner

Has eating GH booster ever killed anyone's fish?

864 views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  sharkbunnie 
#1 · (Edited)
One of my habrosus cories just bit the dust--the second to die out of a group of five. I've only had them for less than a month. The first one slowly wasted away over the first week I had it, so I kind of knew the death was coming. I dosed the entire tank with General Cure after its passing, and all the livestock has been seemingly fine since. All of the cories have been rooting around for food and playing together, and none seemed underfed or sluggish.

Last night, I did a water change (~20% plus about a ~7.5% addition to the volume. It had been about a week and a half since the last one, I'd been sick or it would have been a week...) and while that went fine, I saw literally everything in the tank nibbling on undissolved GH booster afterwards... Shrimp (amanos and blue dreams), ramshorn snails, the cories, all of them (OK, I guess I didn't see any MTS eating it, but). I'm -pretty- sure all four cories were alive at that point, though frankly I wasn't paying as much attention as I could/should have been. I'd seen the cories do this before, and they were fine after, so I wasn't super concerned.

Still, this morning I woke up and could only find three of the cories. After a lot of searching, my partner found it dead by a rock. I didn't feel like doing a total tiny fishy autopsy, but from looking at its body, I didn't see any obvious injuries, parasites, or anything else that would have caused it to croak. However, I did see some spots in its belly that might have just been organs, but also kind-of sort-of looked like an impaction like I remember from photos of geckos that ate sand (different class entirely, I know, but same concept). It really didn't look like any parasite that I've ever seen, nor did it have any symptoms of parasites, and the General Cure should have gotten that.

So has anyone else ever had a fish die because it ate GH booster? I did break it up as much as I could without a ton of effort (I might start pre-dissolving the amount I need like the night before so I don't need to worry, but I wanna say that none of the pieces were wider than a millimeter), and like I said, everything was eating it and nothing else seemed to have problems. Still, maybe this one's eyes were bigger than its stomach and it ate more non-food than it could handle.

If that wasn't it, I'm still interested in trying to figure out what happened... I was poking around in the substrate to get out gas bubbles (I have organic soil capped with PFS, it's -not- anaerobic rn as far as I can tell, I think the bubbles are just CO2 at the moment) and maybe could have stressed it that way or it got a bubble to the face and that killed it? I also don't know how old these cories are, they are about at full size even though I've only had them for a month, so I guess it's possible that it was just old age.

Ammonia and nitrite are at 0, I don't know nitrate at the moment (last time I tested was a while ago, but it was around 10ppm) and kind-of doubt that's the problem since nothing else seems affected. Still, I'll test again when I'm back from work. GH was maybe 5.5dH when I did the water change, now it's just 5dH (which is where I wanted it). TDS did drop about 50 ppm from ~260 to ~210. Haven't tested KH or pH recently, but they've been stable in the past (around 2dH and 7.4-7.6 respectively. I can test them again, too, after work if that seems necessary). But, again, nothing else seems affected so I have trouble imagining any of those things are the problem. The water I added back was approximately the same temp as the water in the tank and dechlorinated etc. too.

Hoping for anecdotes about GH booster killing fish or any other opinions on what might have happened. Thanks in advance!

Nitrate is at 10ppm. Still looking for answers....

Bump: Anyone?
 
See less See more
#4 ·
I would think that if enough was ingested,it would really throw off the internal electrolyte balance of the fish. Too little or too much of any of the electrolytes produce some pretty wild affects or are fatal in mammals, I can only assume that it would be similar in fish.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top