Death of Copperband and Marginalis butterfly due to toxins.

[Scott Laurenson]

How sensitive to toxins are Copperband butterfly fish in the water? I believe i have seen a copperband die from nicotine poisoning (vaping in the same room as the tank). Also another from a small amount of undercured polyester resin added to a fish tank. Has anyone experienced anything like this?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Chasing down various toxins can be pretty tricky as "cause and effect" are not always as well correlated as we may think. Overall, copperbands are fairly sensitive fish, but they are found in inshore habitat in northern Australia (gulf of Carpentia?) so do not need pristine open ocean habitat like some reef fish do.

Nicotine and uncured resins are both known fish toxins. The key here is to combine that with other information from the same event. For example - if a tank is exposed to a toxin and the invertebrates are all fine, but the fish all died, my advice is to look for a fish disease as being the culprit. If everything is dying, then yes, likely to be a severe toxic event. The trick then is; if the other fish/inverts are fine, but just the copperband died, was the fish just that sensitive? I can't answer that....

Jay

 

[Scott Laurenson]

Thanks for the welcome Jay!

In both these cases as you mentioned there were other circumstances that lead me to believe these were the main cause of death. In the Second case A Banded coral shrimp suffered the same fate with the resin about two hours later. The scenario of the nicotine perplexed me until I realised my girlfriend had recently started vaping indoors! had been vaping near the tank in the hours before. matched it the house being sealed up and due to a hot day. And a similar thing happening to another fish under the same circumstances two weeks earlier in hot weather.

All deaths were sudden in healthy fish. I witnessed the demise of the fish in my suspected case of nicotine poisoning it was quick and looked like spasms loss of co-ordination ....basically poisoning of some kind. All the other fish in these tanks are known for being much more resilient.

I wanted to put it out there potentially to warn others or to see if there might be someone else that might have had something similar happen.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I used to be a heavy smoker - I wonder now if some of my "unknown losses" back in the 1970's was due to smoke/nicotine? I know firsthand that PVC cement, if not fully cured and flushed with seawater is toxic.
I have an obscure fish chemical book (Nelson Herwig, Fish Diseases). It states that nicotine is toxic to fish at 3 mg/l (3 parts per million). That would equate to 1.13 grams in a 100 gallon tank - seems like a lot to me. It is actually listed as a medication in that book, for treating leeches.

Jay

 

[Scott Laurenson]

I used to be a heavy smoker - I wonder now if some of my "unknown losses" back in the 1970's was due to smoke/nicotine? I know firsthand that PVC cement, if not fully cured and flushed with seawater is toxic.
I have an obscure fish chemical book (Nelson Herwig, Fish Diseases). It states that nicotine is toxic to fish at 3 mg/l (3 parts per million). That would equate to 1.13 grams in a 100 gallon tank - seems like a lot to me. It is actually listed as a medication in that book, for treating leeches.

Jay

Im very careful to wash everything before it goes in the tank ... hands and all in salt water or RODI first. I had an ongoing mystery problem when i first started out with a contaminant killing coral... sps mainly. I turned out after many icp tests that my zinc aluminium roof was the culprit, There's so much Zinc in the in my rainwater tanks (my household water) that less than a litre of it could kill half of the corals in my 1400 litre system! I have to be very careful not to contaminate the tank. My RODI system is extreme.

Many of my experiences have led me to believe that unknown contaminants are a big killer. It makes sense that a reef fish would have a very low tolerance to nicotine compared to a freshwater fish.

Scott

 

[Scott Laurenson]

What kind of fish / corals /inverts were effected by the uncured pvc?

 

[Tamberav]

If vaping in a room can kill the canary in your reef tank. Imagine a person's lungs in 40 years

That sucks, copperbands are so personable.

 

[kenchilada]

It makes sense that a reef fish would have a very low tolerance to nicotine compared to a freshwater fish

How so?

 

[Scott Laurenson]

Freshwater fish live in the run off from the land... plants debris and such form part of their diet directly or indirectly.... Alkoids (Nicotine is one) Are in many of these plants.... and in the insects that eat them.

Humans and monkeys are the most tolerant of nicotine probably because we evolved to eat fruit... heck some people smoke it. A reef fish is about as far away from this as an animal is likely to get... thus it has no need to build a tolerance.

I suppose another way to look at it is to consider the fact that the marine environment is much more stable... any contaminants are going to be WAY more diluted than those found in freshwater systems.