sera guide - Healthy aquarium fish

8 Preventing and remedying maintenance mistakes and intoxications fish. If in doubt, and if you do not have a con- ductivity meter at hand, please ask your retailer whether the fish were kept under salt addition when purchasing new fish. You must of course also be careful when re-transferring fish from a salt bath. The fish are generally less sensitive to conductivity increases, i.e. when adding salt. Rather quick addition of salt improves the ther- apeutic benefits of a salt bath. However, you should nevertheless adjust the conductivity stepwise if you want to maintain a high final concentration. Adaptation can be achieved by adding sera mineral salt or sera ectopur. Dif- ferences between 100 and 200 μS/cm are neg- ligible (for example, a single preventive dosage of sera ectopur with 0.1 g/l or 5 g per each 50 l (13.2 US gal.) increases the conductivity by on- ly 200 μS/cm). The water conditions can be ad- justed to the according desired levels in small steps with adaptation phases of several hours each. Filter media activation Filter medium with largest possible filter performance Biological water purification sera siporax sera filter biostart sera bio nitrivec NH4/NH3 Ammonium/ ammonia NO2 Nitrite NO3 Nitrate Biological water purification Clean, crystal clear aquarium water Cause: page 25 Prevention/Recommendation: Check the ni- trite level with the sera NO2-Test. In case of dangerously elevated levels (above 0.5 mg/l) you should immediately react with a large par- tial water change and by adding sera toxivec. In the long term you can effectively prevent the accumulation of toxic nitrite by using a filter with a – considering the water amount – suffi- cient settling area for bacteria that break down pollutants (especially well suited: the bioactive filter system consisting of sera siporax with sera filter biostart). Even long lasting low lev- el nitrite pollution may cause permanent dam- ages. Use sera bio nitrivec (freshwater aquar- iums) or sera marin bio reefclear (saltwater aquariums) regularly for maintaining good wa- ter quality. Acute nitrite intoxication 43