What could cause mass deaths

[Zebra]

Hey everyone,

I have a friend who gave me some homemade food that I gave to my BN's & 397's & all but one of the BN's died, he said it was all natural but I was just wondering which of the ingredients would have caused them to die. The list is below:

Kale
Mulberry leaves
Nettle leaf Powder
Spirulina
Barley Grass Powder
Agar Agar

 

[bigbird]

i would always use homemade food with caution. Some are sprayed with pesticides etc. Mulberry and Kale are also very strong and take a long time to dijest. stick with softer foods etc. cheers jk :thumbup:

 

[Zebra]

Thanks dude, I know all the ingredients are organic so no pesticides but I think it was probably the mulberry or kale, before they died they were hanging out in the open & not really moving much, definitely got my attention.

Oh well, lesson learnt

 

[Bigjohnnofish]

did you check any of your water parameters? at the time you found your fish dead ?

quite often the food may have caused ammonia to rise and one fish died and started to decay and then another fish and so on causing chain reaction...

dont know enough about kale and mulberry to have an opinion on them

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
Bad luck, I don't think there is anything in the food that should have caused a problem. Nettle, Kale and Mulberry leave are fed to shrimp, so I'm pretty sure they are OK. Agar is just the gel they use to hold the food together like Repashy foods etc. and both it and Spirulina are pretty widely used as well.

quite often the food may have caused ammonia to rise and one fish died and started to decay and then another fish and so on causing chain reaction...

That would be my suspicion too.

cheers Darrel

 

[Zebra]

All WP were fine as I'm pretty dedicated to keeping the water quality optimum. My mate told me yesterday that there is bee pollen in it too, could this be the cause?

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

My mate told me yesterday that there is bee pollen in it too, could this be the cause?

Unfortunately I think the answer is your probably never going to know for sure.

All WP were fine as I'm pretty dedicated to keeping the water quality optimum.

I still think water quality is the most likely issue. The problem is that there is no easy way of measuring gases like dissolved oxygen etc., and even ions like NO3 are a lot more difficult to measure than "Seachem","Tetra" etc let on.

cheers Darrel

 

[Irene0100]

too much food? oxygen shortage at night if too many plants?