[rhytemaker]

got some new plants from a member yesterday and dumped them in my 20 gallon quarintine tank. standard practice for me is to dose with algacide and had-a-snail for a week before they get into the big tank. (no pond snails and i want to keep it that way).

only problem is today i come home to 4 dead tank raised cherry barbs, 3 dead cories and 2 dead baby goldfish the wife "rescued" from the feeders. GREAT. i never had a problem before and didnt think i overdosed. oh well, at least its just the qt tank.

 

[Philosophos]

Is there any analysis on either bottle? List of ingredients?

There are methods for pre-treating plants that don't involve weeks of quarentine. Potassium permanginate and alumninum sulfate are two of the popular options that have comparitively few risks to plants.

-Philosophos

 

[mistergreen]

your had-a-snail has cooper in it that kills inverts. But it doesn't go away over time, instead it accumulates. So your last dose bumped the copper high enough to kill fish.

 

[Ariel301]

I'm going to second the copper, but I have had issues with algaecide killing fish. I had several adult angels from my breeding stock in an 80 gallon tank that was semi-planted. It was getting some bad algae because the only place I could put the tank got a lot of direct sunlight through a window, so I went to Walmart and got some of those fizzy algae killing tablets from Jungle. The package said they were safe for fish and plants. I dosed the tank according to the instructions and then had to go to a birthday party shortly after. When I came home late that night, I found my roommate frantically doing water changes on the tank (she said she'd been scooping water out and replacing it for two hours!) and several of the fish already dead. Only one fish lived through the ordeal. Since the roommate was doing enormous multiple water changes, I don't know what happened with the water parameters, but the surviving fish seemed to have symptoms of ammonia poisoning and never grew right after.