Two fish dead from stress.....I think

[zippity]

Well to set up the story, I live in south end off Albion road and Lester. In my neighbourhood, they are constructing new homes. These houses are being built like wild weeds growing. Anyways in past week, I have had 2 fish die and I think it is due to the construction people setting off dynamite. They start at 8am and sometimes don't finish till around noon each day, sometimes later. When the dynamite goes off, my house shakes and on some big blasts my water even shakes and I am so scared that due to the pressure of the blasts and the pressure of the water in my tank, my tanks will just explode and after each blast I am relieved to have my tank still in one piece. It is like little earthquake shocks, I can feel the shaking even in the basement and my walls make noise. The blast take place I would say 50 meters away from my house.

Is this good on the fish or will they withstand it? I can only assume death on the stress of shockwaves and I have checked my water params and they are ok.

If it isn't any good, I may need to relocate my fish to other people's houses or sell them off which I am dreading.

Help?!

Cheers,

Terry

[speckledmind]

I think it is due to the construction people setting off dynamite.

No it's not good on fish, and the vibration being so close can make your tanks explode because of the pressure : (

This is off topic, but very urgent.
Move all your snake to another house right now, or you will loose them all.
Snake have a very developed sense that detect vibrations, and that sense is very fragile, so the setting off of dynamite will kill them.

Second.
These close dynamiting session will have an impact on the stability of your house and basement.
Document everything that goes on in your house with time and date, cracks in sheatrock, in wall, doors out of alinement, tiles craked, pipe leaks, check your basement walls for cracks, check you sump pump and see if there is more water there than usual and that will indicate a crack in the foundation of the house, take notes on everything that is out of the ordinary, and don't pass on anything, as it could become worst in the future.

Cheers,
Denis

[beowulf]

I would also add take pictures or even better use a camocorder to document.

[KLKelly]

I'm sorry - that must be frustrating as heck.

Off topic but your fish were so beautiful.  What tank is being affected the most.  Hopefully not those gorgeous little puffers!

Karrie

[zippity]

Well we rent, not own so I don't care what happens to the house with the cement basement, and we are planning to move out of here soon but if not I am checking all levels of foundation and walls. There isn't anything that has gone wrong yet. I have a neighbour who has cracked walls due to this and he lives about same distance away like I do. I have been very lucky so far but trust me I will be keeping a very close eye on things. I can go after their insurance like they told me to do if anything happens but for now it isn't worth it over 2 fish.

My concern is when the blasts go on for hours, my fish start swimming near the top of the water. It takes them about an hour when blasts are done to come back down near bottom of tank. This I can see is causing them stress.

Karrie: No it wasn't the puffers tank. I lost an auratus and a yellow lab from different tanks.


I am also keeping a close eye on my snake tanks, not worried about the glass of course breaking but yes worried about their stress level. It has been 1 week so far with the blasts of dynamite, and this weekend all the snakes ate so if anything goes wrong with them with their normal eating habits I will think it is that too. Unfortunately I can't bring them to any other house and if I did it is alot of moving around.

[Laura]

You should be able to contact the site supervisor for the company who is building the new development and get the schedule for how long the blasting is anticipated to go on for.

Good luck.

[speckledmind]

I am also keeping a close eye on my snake tanks, not worried about the glass of course breaking but yes worried about their stress level. It has been 1 week so far with the blasts of dynamite, and this weekend all the snakes ate so if anything goes wrong with them with their normal eating habits I will think it is that too. Unfortunately I can't bring them to any other house and if I did it is a lot of moving around.

Consider this.
They where building a road near my place two summers ago ( 3 blocks away ), and they blasted every day for over two months, I could feel everything shake in the house every time, at some point a fellow I know that lives even closer to the blasting phones me up, his snakes where dying one after the other and he ended up loosing pretty much all of them over the course of one week, we had talked about the blasting and the effect on snakes a few times, but when he started loosing them, it did not stop, so ! You should move them before it's to late.

One more thing.
Collecting on damages caused by blasting is far from being easy, you need a lot of documentation and proof that the blasting was the cause, they will bounce you back and forth from the city, the province, the contractor and sub contractor who blasted with red tape.
Of course they have insurance, claiming them is a whole different thing though.
My friend lost a lot of time trying to claim, a lot of money from everything he lost, and ended up giving up on the cause because of the bull and red tape.

Cheers,
Denis

[squeeker]

Denis,

I don't doubt that your friend's snakes died, but I think you're over-reacting a little.

If snakes dropped dead from vibration, they'd never survive shipping.  If you've ever flown, you'd know that planes vibrate pretty well, even without turbulence.

Back to the fish.

Zippity, it doesn't surprise me that this is stressing your fish.  Try to keep things stress -free in your tanks (lights off, well-oxygenated, clean water, quality food... maybe even add a bit of salt and up the temp a degree or two) and see if that helps.  If not, you might have to move the tank to another part of the house or something.

Good luck!

[babblefish1960]

Very good advice squeek, that about covers the entire problem rather well. Blasting is stressful all around.

[zippity]

yes it sure is, when they do it, it can go one for a few hours but my fish will stay near the top of tank and won't come down till later in the night. Now it has seemed that the fish in 3 of the tanks have either gotten used to it or it doesn't bother them. The only fish still acting out of character are my yellow labs. I will keep an eye on these guys and do some of things that I don't normally do for them which is like leaving lights off all day and adding some salt, their temp is at 80 degrees now. This blasting can go on for quite along time. The past blasting here is only for 2 houses, there is still room on either side for another 10 houses to go up at least. Big reason why we are thinking of moving out of this place, we enjoyed all the open forest and air but now too many houses, just another thing we tried to stay away from. Where we may move to, only one neighbour and is about 100 feet away and lots of farm land.

[zippity]

I was wondering if anyone on here or many people, if things continue to get worse could possibly babysit my cichlids until we move out of our house and into new home which hopefully all goes well will be in a couple of months. You can either have an existing tank or an empty tank or I can bring the tanks I have over, yes it is alot of work but I may need to do this because everyday during the week with my smaller 2 tanks, they get a bit stressed out, not so much in my big tank although that is the tank you can see the water movement the most. For now I am thinking of putting all the fish into my one big tank but doing more partial w/c's.

Would it be ok to have 20 da-may-sun-i, 2 auratus, 1 estherae, 2 labs, 2 socolofi, 2 gigas in one 77 gal tank? If so, how often and how much should I be changing of the water, and how much filtration should be on?

Cheers,

Terry