Lace Rocks Bad?

I bought some lace rock from a LFS in January when I was setting up a new 30 gallon, which the clerk told me were inert and wouldn't change water chemistry. I cycled the tank with a sponge from one of my other tanks and everything seemed fine, except the ramshorn snails kept dying. At one point, I had a snail graveyard, but the fish seemed fine. Eventually I had to drip acclimate my snails for a couple hours so they would survive the transition. Never in my life thought I would acclimate ramshorns.

About a month ago, fish started dying, some with no symptoms, others with popeye and dropsy. Water changes didn't seem to help. Every day there would be another dead fish. Ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates were at 0. I even went out and got a copper test kit, which also showed zero. The only strange thing was the pH was up around 7.6-7.8, which is high for my Seattle water. Would a high pH take a month or two to kill fish that had been acclimated to it, or could there be metals that are poisoning everything?

Either way, I pulled out the rocks and now hoping fish will stop dying in that tank. Anyone know where to get cool, safe rocks on the cheap?

Fish in the tank are guppies and a female betta (corys all died)

The tank: right after it was set up. It's now overgrown with plants.
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It is not the rocks. My ph is 7.8. Let me ask you this, and I am sure it will start a debate. When you do water changes, do you use warm water from your hot water tank? How old would you guesstimate your hot water tank is?

Did you rinse and clean the rocks before putting them in?

Squirmteben wrote:About a month ago, fish started dying, some with no symptoms, others with popeye and dropsy. Water changes didn't seem to help. Every day there would be another dead fish. Ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates were at 0.

If your tank is fully cycled your nitrates should not be 0 ????

Cichlid gal is correct zero nitrates = un or incompletely cycled tank. My ph is over 8 and all mt SA/ CA Cichlids do fine, no issues at all. I have a lot of lace rock and texasholey rock....all these rocks wil raise oh some. It really sounds like some kind of water quality issue. I use water from a heater in my changes but it is a flow through heat it as you need it system. Regular tanks can have unspeakable horrors in them when they get old.

Possible the rocks brought some hitchhiking contaminants? Always a good idea to scrub and boil new rocks before putting them in your tank

It's possible to have 0 nitrates. Even before I installed a drip system I was able to maintain 0 and or really close to it with plants and massive filtration. Im just saying...

more important...than 0 nitrate(since it is possible in certain set ups)
what are the current water parameters.

NH3/NH4, NO2??

High pH is really important when considering the effects of NH3/NH4
remember that in acidic water NH3 is converted to NH4..the lower the pH the greater the conversion of NH3 to NH4

here's the problem tho.. most of our tests for ammonia test for total ammonia..but the chemistry portion of pH is where this is important as the ammonia is more prone to be NH3(ammonia) in a higher (basic) water pH.
ammonia(NH3) is more toxic to the fish than ammonium(NH4).

I do use water from my hot water tank, just enough so that the water isn't too much colder than the tank temp. I don't know how old the water tank is. I have two other aquariums, a ten and a 30, which I do water changes at the same times with the same water and have no problems. The other tank is about a year old and everything seems fine.

I rinsed and scrubbed the rocks before putting them in the tank, but I didn't boil them because I've heard of lace rocks having pockets that can explode (maybe someone made that up, but it sounded believable).

I usually don't test nitrates in my tanks unless something goes wrong, like this, because they are heavily planted and usually register low or zero. But my nitrate tester could be old, also, since I never test for it. I test ammonia and nitrite more regularly and they are both zero.

Thanks everyone for trying to help me figure this out.

Every once in a while One of my tanks will develop some phantom issue. Sometimes weeks will go by until I finally figure out what happened. The last one was about a year ago and turned out to be a PH crash.

A few months ago Madness brought the "hot water tank" issue up. I thought about it a bit. Even though I've never had issue that I could directly blame on my hot water tank I can say I've had a few mystery issues I've never solved. Besides this i remembered when a hot water tank in an old apartment rusted out. It was pretty nasty. Couldn't believe all the crap that came out of that thing. Also remembered as a child my parents telling to never drink hot water from the tap...

Needless to say I now no longer conduct water changes using warm water from tap. If my parents say I shouldn't be drinking it then I don't think I want my fish breathing it, lol. Our fish are all challenged enough being in limited space, and having to deal with our already processed water...

If your able to put a finger on this please update us.

Exactly Chad. I use to do warm water changes about 3 years ago, and I also had some issues that I could not explain. So I called my water company and asked them if they were adding something to the water. They informed me that they had not put anything in it, but they would send a tech out to test my water.

Obviously the tech was fascinated with the tanks and fish. (at that time it was barely half of what I have today) He came in and tested the water straight from the tap. Other than our ph being a bit on the high side, everything else looked normal. Then he asked me, "do you use water from your heater to fill your tanks?" I told him yes and he immediately said , "I will be right back". He went and got this huge doctor bag, full of chemicals. He than ran tests on the water that came out of my tank. :affraid:OMG, the readings were off the charts. We are talking iron, lead, copper, you name it. So I tell him that I use dechlorinator and rid metal. So, he tested the water again, this time after I used the chemicals. The readings dropped, to the point of being harmless to humans, but still far to high for the fish.(Even after using Prime and Rid-Metals) Then he asked me why I use the dechlorinator, so I explained. He ran test on my tap water from the outside faucet before adding Prime and after adding Prime, and the readings were identical. This is why I do not waste my money on Prime, and why I use cold water from the faucet.

He put it to me like this, sure your fish may never show signs, but are they really living a healthy life or achieving their full size and color and reproduction abilities? Are they living a full life? Lets change the ratio of metals the fish have to deal with and increase them so that the amounts are equal to our size, and have us ingest them everyday of our life. Would we catch that flu easier? Maybe catch diseases easier, and live a much shorter life? Basically the metals would deplete our immune system, and we would constantly be dealing with issues we may or may not be able to explain. (kinda like your tank)

Doesnt your fish need a strong immune system also?

You have no idea, how many times I have said this, and how many times I have posted on it. I still get the individuals that say, "well I have been doing it this way for years and have never had issues." But if your fish are living 6,7,10 years, maybe they would live 15 if you weren't poisoning them. And be much more colorful, and alive.........

But wont the cold water harm my fish? NO. My fish swim in the cold stream, even in the Winter. I do 25-30% water changes and the temp drops anywhere from 4-7 degrees. Isnt this normal to some extent in the wild? Cold evenings, and cold front, snow melt, rain, dont these drop the temps a few degrees?

I'll do a water change tomorrow and start only using cold water. Come to think of it, it was only recently I started using warm water... about the same time I got the rocks. I'll let you know what happens.

btw, you should be flushing your hot water tank at home I do every year.

the issue with them is precipitates that collect in the bottom of the hot water tank.. this is pro thr reason of the higher readings.. hot water tanks are glasslined.. the glass is inert..but the water in all systems comes from the same source..the only difference btwn the hot and cold water in your system is the hot water tank itself.

think of it like not changing then water in your tanks..
that is the reason there is a faucet attached to the hot water tanks



btw.. depending on you set up.. you could use hoding tanks and pre heat and treat your water prior to changes

madness is correct tho for normal water changes the cold water won't affect temp enough to cause issues for many fish
but if you do large water changes , do on many of my tanks..think discus and Altum(50%+) here
it is better to reduce the temp variation..

I also forgot to mention, yes a routine flush will help, but how about the bacteria? I mean really, warm, dark, wet. A perfect breeding ground for bacteria. Which is another reason why I am against the canister filters that are not see through. Actually all of them. There are hundreds of web sites that tell you reasons why we as humans should not, brush our teeth with warm water, cook with warm water, drink warm water. Its not just the metals, its everything about the tank that screams, ISSUES!!!!!!

it's hot water tank. most bacteria will not fare well in a tank where water temp is as high as 160/170
and since most bacteria are handled from source water (water treatment using chlorine/chloramine ) as well as other treatment.
it would possibly be more of an issue with well water.
that said , most home systems flush enough water thru the pipes that bacteria would be a non issue
those bacteria in question would probably do no more harm to fish considering where they come from.. we can drink the water safely where they reside.

I disagree. In my case, I may be lucky if I use 50 gallons of water to flush my tank and pipes. Like I said earlier, people will disagree and say bogus on it all. I had the water company out here for 4 hours, testing for everything. So you can risk it, or not even worry about the issues and just dont use it.

I am only trying to let you all know, what I witnessed. I will never use hot water tank water, regardless if it has a maintenance routine, its brand new, or if there is a filter on it. The what ifs IMO far out weigh the ifs.

I'm going to give it a try. I usually use colder water to induce spawns, but when fish in this tank were showing signs of illness I switched to using more hot water than cold. For the last month or two, in that tank, it's been a bonanza of different symptoms. I thought it was the rocks (which I'm only going to add back slowly if everything gets better).

My next big purchase was possibly going to be an RODI unit. I think it definitely will be if I'm having water quality issues. I do live in an old building.

I had a lot of lace rock in my 150 gallon and two 55 gallons for a year and I was having to add Cichlid salt to raise my PH. Out of the tap mine is 6.8 so the rock definitely does not affect PH

Squirmteben wrote:I bought some lace rock from a LFS in January when I was setting up a new 30 gallon, which the clerk told me were inert and wouldn't change water chemistry. I cycled the tank with a sponge from one of my other tanks and everything seemed fine, except the ramshorn snails kept dying. At one point, I had a snail graveyard, but the fish seemed fine. Eventually I had to drip acclimate my snails for a couple hours so they would survive the transition. Never in my life thought I would acclimate ramshorns.

About a month ago, fish started dying, some with no symptoms, others with popeye and dropsy. Water changes didn't seem to help. Every day there would be another dead fish. Ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates were at 0. I even went out and got a copper test kit, which also showed zero. The only strange thing was the pH was up around 7.6-7.8, which is high for my Seattle water. Would a high pH take a month or two to kill fish that had been acclimated to it, or could there be metals that are poisoning everything?

Either way, I pulled out the rocks and now hoping fish will stop dying in that tank. Anyone know where to get cool, safe rocks on the cheap?

Fish in the tank are guppies and a female betta (corys all died)

The tank: right after it was set up. It's now overgrown with plants.
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madness, I am neither agreeing with you or disagreeing with you.
as a matter of fact your point has merit.
especially, when considering that fact that sediment does sit in the hot water tank and can be detrimental. and is worthy of consideration.
The fact that many Discus Keepers use holding tanks to do water changes is proof in point.