Did Tetra Pond Crystal Water kill my fish?

[Corgi Mom]

I can't add much to what has been already said. I don't add chemicals unless I see disease and have to use it. I do add salt and that helps a lot preventing most disease. My learning experience came last year when I lost 18 beautiful fish - one after the other floating to the top. It got extremely hot early last summer right in the middle of my algae bloom. I forgot to add my bubbler and the poor fish paid the price. I'll never do that again. If you don't have one, buy a bubble to provide additional oxygen. And add pond salt at the recommended dosage for your pond. It gives the fish a slime layer to help ward off disease.

 

[Mmathis]

@Corgi Mom I will admit that my biology might be off, but……. Other members correct me if I’m wrong….. Salt acts as an irritant. It will stimulate the production of excess slime, and cause the slime layer to thicken, to help slough off other external irritant, such as external parasites. Slime layer is naturally occurring on fish.

But I do 100% agree about having extra sources of air!

 

[mrsclem]

Salt works for a short time and then it does no good. Just like regular doses of antibiotics, only good for so long. Salt is a great treatment in a quarantine tank.

 

[Mayank]

Salt works for a short time and then it does no good. Just like regular doses of antibiotics, only good for so long. Salt is a great treatment in a quarantine tank.

When we first got our pond going last year, we added salt at the very beginning and only one time according to the instructions from our pond store, Grassroots. Based on comments here and doing some research, I decided to not add salt again. After many water changes I am sure my salt levels from that initial dosing are probably negligible. I am not planning to add salt anytime soon unless new/different information comes out...

 

[Philippa Woolf]

Hi all. I have a pond which had been completely neglected since it was installed by the previous owners of the house. It is 12 ft x 10 ft by about 2.5 ft at its deepest point and has a black flexible pond liner. I never believed there were any fish in it until we saw one recently very briefly between all the weeds and brambles overgrowing the pond. I decided to clear it out and try to restore it. I should add that I have another pond in the garden (12ft x 6 and about 18 in deep with about 15 fish in it averaging about 5-6 inches.

Having cleared out the overgrown pond, I added a 1500 lph solar pump and some more oxygenating plants (hornwort, parrots feather canadian pond weed etc) I decided to add some fish having checked the basic water parameters. I used an NT labs kit to check Ammonia, nitrite and pH. pH is about 7.8, Ammonia is 0.05 ppm and nitrite is about 0.1.

I added the fish about 4-6 weeks ago and they seemed to do very well. A couple of them grew very quickly. I got up to about 12 fish in the pond and was really starting to enjoy it but the one area which was bugging me was the clarity of the water which was a bit cloudy. Having looked at it though a glass, i saw the water had sediment suspended in it, so I decided to treat the water with TetraPond Crystal Water. I followed the dosage recommendations but was horrified to see the fish seemingly gasping for air at the surface about two hours after the product had been added.

I managed to transfer some fish to the other pond a couple of which survived. The rest (10 fish) have died. They were Blue and Golden Orfes, small Koi, Ghost Koi and Shubunkin between 4 and 10 inches.

I went on the internet to research the process by which the tetrapond product works. It's called flocculation, but the product claims to be completely safe for fish and plants. It seems to me that the process used up the oxygen in the water which killed the fish. I have tried to contact Tetra but they have failed to reply despite a promise to reply within 24 hours. That was a week ago. With hindsight I think their product imformation has insufficient detail about the risks associated with it's use, for example maybe I should have used it at a time of the day when there was more oxygen in the water. Has anyone heard of anything similar? What did I do wrong?

Grateful for any help. I'm now nervous to buy any more fish until I fully understand what went wrong.

I have had just the same thing happen . There is a white scum coming of them , its definatly the tetra crystal clear .
I dont know what to do .Philippa Woolf France