Reclaiming A Poisoned Fish Pond

[Somtham]

Somtham, There are only two things smell like dead fish,and I can assure you this was aquatic, one consolation of this saga is that the trees we plant over the burial pits will be forest giants in no time.

Hope you realize that it was meant to be satirical for a certain poster.

May your trees grow to the sky but.....there are much cheaper fertilizers. I pray that I never have to got through what you did this week.

rgds

[macan]

Sorry to hear about the fish kill.

The Medical Sciences Department, Ministry of Public Health have a pesticide test kit for consumer use. It only identifies 2 groups of pesticides but they are pretty nasty and commonly used ones in Thailand (organophosphates and carbamates). Details are here http://www.dmsc.moph.go.th/webroot/food/fi...pesticidese.htm

I havent tried it but i can tell you that it is cheap compared to pesticide analysis at private labs. A problem with sending stuff to the lab, as I understand it, is that most labs dont have a magic machine that can tell you what is in a sample unless you can give an idea of what they should be looking for; then they will do individual tests for the possible pollutants which gets expensive fast.

I shall PM you the contact details for an aquaculture lecturer at Kasetsart who has done a lot of work on the ecotoxicology of agrochemicals in the aquatic environment. He may be able to advise on the best recovery steps.

[ozzydom]

Somtham, There are only two things smell like dead fish,and I can assure you this was aquatic, one consolation of this saga is that the trees we plant over the burial pits will be forest giants in no time.

Hope you realize that it was meant to be satirical for a certain poster.

May your trees grow to the sky but.....there are much cheaper fertilizers. I pray that I never have to got through what you did this week.

rgds

Yep,realized that mate,Google finger was the clue, very good.

[chownah]

I saw it...it was one of the funniest things I've seen posted in a long time!!! Good work, Somtham.

Chownah

[Somtham]

I saw it...it was one of the funniest things I've seen posted in a long time!!! Good work, Somtham.

Chownah

Glad you enjoyed the humorous side but hope you also picked up on the not so subtle point of the post.

rgds

[chownah]

I saw it...it was one of the funniest things I've seen posted in a long time!!! Good work, Somtham.

Chownah

Glad you enjoyed the humorous side but hope you also picked up on the not so subtle point of the post.

rgds

There is more than one not so subtle points that can be seen in the post. I'd love to discuss the post's meaning relative to this thread with you. Do you think this thread is the place to do it? If so simply proceed here and I'll follow your lead....but perhaps we should do it via an exchange of personal messages...that way we won't feel inhibited or needing to stay brief. No need to worry about being off topic or angering the moderators..we could give it full thought and consideration in writing our replies.

Really, I'm up for it. I hope you won't disappoint me. I find that when I offer to discuss these sorts of thing that people rarely take me up on this. One poster did and in the end we still did not agree but I think its fair to say that we both came away with a better undersanding of our views....I think it was productive for both of us....but alas this only happened once....it seems like most posters would rather strike a proud pose publically to impress the....I really don't know who is impressed with this sort of grandstanding....I think its mostly the other grandstand players...it sort of a hit and run strategy...make a few points with some "brilliant" repartee then wait for your buddies to chime in.....it will never result in any meaningful understanding...oh well!!!

Chownah

Edited June 7, 2007 by chownah

[Somtham]

There is more than one not so subtle points that can be seen in the post. I'd love to discuss the post's meaning relative to this thread with you. Do you think this thread is the place to do it? If so simply proceed here and I'll follow your lead....but perhaps we should do it via an exchange of personal messages...that way we won't feel inhibited or needing to stay brief. No need to worry about being off topic or angering the moderators..we could give it full thought and consideration in writing our replies.

Really, I'm up for it. I hope you won't disappoint me. I find that when I offer to discuss these sorts of thing that people rarely take me up on this. One poster did and in the end we still did not agree but I think its fair to say that we both came away with a better undersanding of our views....I think it was productive for both of us....but alas this only happened once....it seems like most posters would rather strike a proud pose publically to impress the....I really don't know who is impressed with this sort of grandstanding....I think its mostly the other grandstand players...it sort of a hit and run strategy...make a few points with some "brilliant" repartee then wait for your buddies to chime in.....it will never result in any meaningful understanding...oh well!!!

Chownah

I won't clutter Dom's post any more than I already have. The PM has been sent.

rgds

[Gary A]

So Ozzy, was the pond poisoned or not? I now have two ponds and am quite interested why the fish died. More information, please.

[ozzydom]

So Ozzy, was the pond poisoned or not? I now have two ponds and am quite interested why the fish died. More information, please.

I was going to post results tonight Gary, Ag Dept bloke came this morning with results, when he told us it was cyanide I near fell over , I was imaging all the worst scenario,s, but he said that if the fish are going to get poisoned it is the best because the poison is killed by sunlight after it sinks through the water.

He said if it had been herbicide or insectiside we would have had a major cleanup is they go into the sludge and sit there so you have to remove about a foot from the bottom of the pond.

So we dug a drain sump at the weekend and the pond has been flushed and pumped out twice now (the last yesterday after a heavy storm put about a foot of water in it ).Now we are refilling by putting about 6 inches a day from the Klong to let as much sunlight as possible on it, on Monday we put in 400kg of dolomite (not lime) as they said that it was better at nuetralising poison ,if thats what it was,and now we know so they made the right call.

With that much dolomite,getting the PH right will be our next chore,before we can restock.

I am hoping it was a one off fit of angst by somebody and wont be repeated, I suppose it could have been worse and we could have lost them all.

The farm is a registered business and the Friday before the incident we had signs made and put up pointing the way to the farm,maybe one of those cases where advertising didnt pay off.

Dom

[frikkiedeboer]

So Ozzy, was the pond poisoned or not? I now have two ponds and am quite interested why the fish died. More information, please.

I was going to post results tonight Gary, Ag Dept bloke came this morning with results, when he told us it was cyanide I near fell over , I was imaging all the worst scenario,s, but he said that if the fish are going to get poisoned it is the best because the poison is killed by sunlight after it sinks through the water.

He said if it had been herbicide or insectiside we would have had a major cleanup is they go into the sludge and sit there so you have to remove about a foot from the bottom of the pond.

So we dug a drain sump at the weekend and the pond has been flushed and pumped out twice now (the last yesterday after a heavy storm put about a foot of water in it ).Now we are refilling by putting about 6 inches a day from the Klong to let as much sunlight as possible on it, on Monday we put in 400kg of dolomite (not lime) as they said that it was better at nuetralising poison ,if thats what it was,and now we know so they made the right call.

With that much dolomite,getting the PH right will be our next chore,before we can restock.

I am hoping it was a one off fit of angst by somebody and wont be repeated, I suppose it could have been worse and we could have lost them all.

The farm is a registered business and the Friday before the incident we had signs made and put up pointing the way to the farm,maybe one of those cases where advertising didnt pay off.

Dom

since the ag dept fellow was able to diagnose cyanide poisoning, i assume it was still present in the water at the time he tested it.and that he did not just make an assumption based on the fact that it dissipates so quickly and supposed that it must be cyanide since there was no trace of anything else, and he didnt want to let you think he was stupid for not finding anything. i dont think this was the case, but you know about the "face thing"

how, or where would a local find the stuff, or is it present in a readily available insecticide or such? very high concentration of cyanide in mun sampalang leaves-dont know how much would be needed to kill off your fish, but is it possible some idiot or the local kids may have thrown some in to feed the fish? i had a big problem with the local kids throwing rice-bran, rice and all sorts of shit into my tanks.

sorry , i dont want to sound as if i doubt the findings, but this is a really scary situation, for all of us, and i really hope that a simple explanation can be found

i hope you find the source, and that it can be put down to just a once-off act of jealousy, because if it is not, then we may be seeing the start of a trend, which places us all at risk.

i wish you well in your venture, and hope you will not ever have to go through this again

regards and best wishes

frikkie

am editing this coz i just thought of something. you mentioned a reddish tinge in the water. we used ferrous cyanide in the old days in the printing industry, to etch photographic film during retouching. it is supplied in the form of a reddish-orange powder. it is neutralised with sodium thiosulphate (fixer, or hypo used to fix photographs) could this have been the source? i hope not, as this would suggest that somebody with a brain may have been involved.......

Edited June 13, 2007 by frikkiedeboer

[Gary A]

It's a really dirty shame that anyone would do that. I don't know anything about cyanide except that it was used in the past to execute people. It sounds like you have a handle on it and that the cleanup won't be as bad as you had feared. I guess it is a be thankful kind of thing that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It must have taken quite a bit to poison the entire pond. Is it that easy to get and is it commonly available? Perhaps they will be able to trace someone who bought a large quantity of it?

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

[Tilapia]

We use cyanide to clean up the ponds, when we are to lazy to pump all the water out. If it is used in the correct way and the right dose, then it takes around 7-10 days to break down, and then new fish can be released, no problems there.

Tilapia.

[btate]

cyanide is the chemical of "choice" for Thai fishermen to lazy to net or catch.

Many instances of this occuring on the reefs off the coast.

E. G.

[ozzydom]

It's a really dirty shame that anyone would do that. I don't know anything about cyanide except that it was used in the past to execute people. It sounds like you have a handle on it and that the cleanup won't be as bad as you had feared. I guess it is a be thankful kind of thing that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It must have taken quite a bit to poison the entire pond. Is it that easy to get and is it commonly available? Perhaps they will be able to trace someone who bought a large quantity of it?

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

The toxicity test was done in a Uni lab down south, All I know of cyanide is that put in hydrochloric acid it is used in gas chambers to top criminals. I dont know what form it comes in, the wife asked him (at my behest ) where people get such stuff, his reply was "many people have".

THe locals seem to take this sort of thing as a regular occurance ,along with cattle stealing,dog poisonings,nothing seems to come as a surprise to them.

Anyway ,to add to security I am fitting the recently installed floodlights with timer switch to go on and off at different times,it is only a matter of changing a few pins to alter the frequency.

Whether it will work as a deterrant is debatable.

[plachon]

Didn't you have a problem not so long back with a rellie taking his cattle on your land, by the fish ponds if I'm not mistaken, and you ended up thumping him one? Seemed to remember everyone congratulating you for your right hook. Could that be your culprit by any chance?