Organic Aqua Water Quality Testing

Hi all,

Long story short is I have a 450 litre African Cichlid tank with +/- 28 eighteeen month old Cichlids and 2 rusty plecos. I was a complete newbie 18 months ago and have received great assistance from the people on this forum, Damien O'Kelly of Aqua Clear Aquariums who designed and set it up for me and Dimitri and Liam from Fintastic in Dun Laoghaire who have always been very helpful with advice. Heres a clickable thumbnail picture

I originally had a traditional set up but was struggling with a lot of algae and high nitrates and the twin 50% water changes per week were becoming a real pain. Dimitri explained to me that they use Organic Aqua in their big tanks and how it works. It sounded like it was a perfect solution for my tank so I switched over at the end of March and have followed the instructions to a tee since then i.e. washing all the filter media in tap water, doing a 25% water change just once a month, plenty of air filtering and ventilation etc. The results were outstanding. Not only were the fish very happy but the algae problem disappeared and I went from spending 20+ hours a month testing water and doing multiple large water changes to spending less than 2 hours a month on maintenance.

Everything was hunky dory until last week when the water took on a greeen sheen and the fish started to look stressed with one of them hovering vertically at the top of the tank 'gasping' for air. The lads in Fintastic talked me through what was happening and tested some water samples. The upshot was extremly high nitrate readings but then I know the Organic Aqua system will always produce high Nitrate readings relative to a 'traditional' system so the fact the readings appeared high didn't necessarily concern me. Nevertheless there was clearly something wrong and something had made the system crash so I did a 90% water change with a new Organic Aqua starter kit and repeated that again the next day. The fish who was hovering vertically became progressively more stressed and died (he was one of the best specimens I had ) but now 4 days later the tank seems to be back to normal with crystal clear water and happy colourful fish.

I suppose my two questions are:-

1. What could have caused the crash? (I asked Organic Steve for help and he responded quickly with questions to check if I was doing anything I shouldn't have been doing but I haven't been doing anything silly. I feed them New Life Spectrum and keep them at 25c. End of story. Nothing else added.)

2. Is there any way to test the water conditions in an Organic Aqua setup? With a traditional system we have test kits and paramaters for Nitrate, Nitrite, PH etc but nothing similar seems to exist for an Organic Aqua seteup. Can I use the same test kits but with different thresholds?

The only downside I see (or have experienced) from using Organic Aqua is that I can't pro-actively monitor the system water quality to identify problems early. If there was a way to do this I'd be a very happy camper indeed.

All help, suggestions, criticisms etc much appreciated.

Ben

hi ben. i enjoyed reading your very well written and descriptive post.
i am a fan of organic aqua and find it works extremely well in most situations, but i dont pretend to know how it actually works.
my guess with your tank (re your description)is as the fast growing malawis created an increasing pressure on the filter (OA)it crashed and the fish gaping at the surface would indicate lack of oxygen and/or poisoning (nitrite).
the fact that a large water change solved the problem is very good news.
what do you think steve?

ps. i agree the lads in fintastic are very helpful and knowledgeable and i love the fact that they are avid and dedicated fishkeepers with tanks in their own homes.

Id be thinking the same as derek, that as the fish became bigger causing the crash.

But is the tank over stocked dough....? what size are the fish....?

I was thought that each pack you get is for the size of tank you have and is it possible you got the wrong pack or made a small error in water changing...?

Alan

Hi Lads,

Thanks for the feedback.

The tank originally had +/- 40 Cichlids but natural (de)selection has trimmed that down to around 28 now. There are 3 or 4 'monsters' i.e. 12cm - 14cm but most are much smaller than that (half that size) and my understanding is that I am well below what the tank could actually hold. There is about 60kg of rock in there so I guess that is displacing 60 litres or so of water leaving a net 390 litres in the tank. Is that not enough for 28 fish? If so what should I trim it down to?

I'm DEFINETLY using the right OA packs, they are the 250-500 litre packs.

One thing which does bug me is how best to use the External Tetra Tec 1200 filter in an OA setup. Should In the 4 trays there is a combination of charcoal sponges, ceramic hoops, black spheres and filter wool. (I sometimes use activated carbon pellets also). Given that this setup was designed for a traditional biological system what changes if any should I make to it? I've noticed during the monthly water changes when I wash the various media under the tap that there is very little waste material in the external Tetra Tec 1200, the water is quite clear with very little waste residue compared to when I ran a biological set up. All the waste seems to be getting taken care ofof by the Internal Jad SP-2300III filter which I intoduced at the time I switched over to OA. Perhaps the Jad has just taken the main load off the 1200 and would have done the same in the old biological set up also?

I guess there isn't an obvious/easy answer to my main question which is whether or not there is any way to test the water quality in an OA set up so control freaks like me can satsfy themselves that all is well (or not) long before fish start to get stressed and die???

Ben

i would guess that the activated carbon and charcoal sponges are probably adversely affecting the organic aqua. the carbon is taking in the oa enhanced water and when saturated is probably releasing toxins into the water.

when using organic, ammonia and nitrite are neutralised and therfore there should be no need for testing these. nitrate except in high quantities or with very delicate fish is not really harmful. whether oa is used or not the proven way to keep nitrate at safe levels is with regular water changes.

Hi Derek,

There hasn't been any carbon in the external filter for > 2 months but I would have used 2 batches in the preceding 4 months. It seems to 'polish' the water nicely but OA produces crystal like water anyway so I've no issue not using carbon in future. If I take the charcoal sponges out of the Tetra Tec 1200 what will I replace it with? Plain jane filter wool? Would 4 trays of filter wool and nothing else in the canister be the best way to go? Do I even need the 1200 at all if OA is expelling all the bad gasses through air filtration and the internal JAD 2300 is collecting all the physical waste???? The 1200 does route the water through a UV steriliser so I guess that's a good thing and a good reason to keep the 1200 running?

I'm getting the strong feeling from 75 views of this thread and the few responses that there is no answer to the main question i.e. there is no way to measure water quality in an OA setup?

BTW, I got the fish sizes a little wrong!!! The 3 big monsters are between 17cm to 19cm!! I'd say most of the rest are +/-12cm and maybe 25% are +/- 8cm.

Ben

Hi Ben
I used OA for about 6 mounths on my first tank setup, like yourself seemed to work a treat, water clear , fish seemed happy and alert. I tried testing several times, the usually ammonia , nitrite and nitrate but the readings were all over the place. There was no consistancy in the results and at first i taught i had a real problem with my water.
I done a bit of digging around checking different sources for information and the general response i got was to forget about testing as OA does not work in the conventional way like a standard biological filter. You basically have to hand over all your trust to the product and follow the set OA procedure on water changes etc.
So to answer your question i could not find out any way to test the OA product accept to look at my fish and check to see if they are healthy. In fairness i never had any problems using OA and i think in certain setups it is a great products like if you have to setup a tank in quick time like a quartine tank.

Hopefully organic steve might be able to shed some light on the issue and answer your question to your satification.

Hope it all works out for you and by the way its a cracking tank you have there

GB

Thanks for the positive feedback Gerry. For a control freak like me it's hard to just 'trust' that everything is going along hunky dory!! I need to "KNOW" what's going on!!