I feel like the stupidest person alive, but i need help. I wanted to give Sushi a better home and add some tannins to his water. I saw some sources online saying that black tea could be used for fishtanks. I made 500 ml of “tank tea” using 2 catappa leaves, a spoonful of plain black tea and an alder cone. I just took out 25% of the water for a regular water change and poured the mixture along with clean water but i realized it was very dark. I waited for 30 minutes and realized Sushi was acting quite weird. Looked into more sources and realized that the mix HAD WAY TOO MUCH CAFFEINE for it to be safe for fish. I panicked and took out almost all the water out, 75% water change. The water is now only slightly brown, it used to be way way darker before, and Sushi is lethargic. The water is warm and water paramaters same as before the water change, the exposure was short (around 35-40 minutes).
Is he going to be ok?? Is he lethargic because i took out too much water or did i ACCIDENTALLY POISON MY FISH LIKE AN IDIOT??
https://i.redd.it/9azhpnr8ls9g1.jpeg
Posted by mewz_0
10 Comments
I would isolate and put him a new temp setup with oxygen , some rooted plants and almond leaf – just to be safe !
Commenting to boost you because I’m not 100% familiar with the effects of caffeine on a fish or betta but catappa leaves will cause your water to be brown. It’s the tannins. For future reference I would just stick with the catappa leaves. I personally haven’t heard of people using black tea leaves
unfortunately that does seem like a lot of caffeine for your fish. i wouldn’t put any caffeine in your tank anymore. is your fish moving? are their gills moving? to me your fish looks unalive.
Teas used in an aquarium shouldn’t have *any* caffeine at all, so yeah this is very bad. On top of that, boiling all of that and then pouring it back into the tank probably introduced quite a swing in the pH as well. And tehn doing another massive water change caused another big swing. He is definitely lethargic due to a combination of everything that happened, unfortunately. Not much else to do other than add some charcoal to hopefully pull everything out of the water, and hope for him to pull through.
For future reference, try organic rooibois tea instead, and refrain from adding loads of tannins all at once. If you get rooibois teabags, you can add them to the filter to tint the water slowly, and botanicals can be added straight away (or after boiling if you want them to sink immediately) to also release tannins slowly over time. And again, dont overload the tank. Botanicals are after all just organic matter that decomposes. Too many can and will cause bacterial blooms, and can and often will crash the pH even in very hard and otherwise stable water (or depending on the water volume).
Keep an eye on your ammonia if he pulls through. That’s a big water change, even though it was probably the right thing to do.
Aww, I hope he pulls through. It feels so terrible when we make mistakes that have a potentially harmful impact on our pets. But we’re all human and make mistakes at times even with the best of intentions. Sounds like you’ve done everything possible to try and mend things for him. Good luck to you both.
Look into doing a methylene blue dip for your fish. Google it. I am NO EXPERT so look into it first as a last ditch. But supposedly if you only did it for 10 seconds it’s not that harmful to the fish. My fish looked like yours and in 30 minutes after a dip, he was swimming around like nothing was wrong.
The only tea you can actually use for tanks is rooibos tea which is naturally caffeine free.
You may have done some damage, but bettas are really hardy and can whitstand shitty water conditions.
If you did your water change fast enough he should be ok, but do monitor his behaviour to see if anything is odd, and do small gradual water changes over the next few days
Hopefully he doesn’t feel like I feel when I have too much coffee. I hate that feeling.
Sick, dying, injured fish should be marked as a spoiler.