Nitrogen Supersaturation

[Live Rocker]

Has anyone ever heard of nitrogen supersaturation before? I recently added 4 rio 1200's and a redsea waver maker to my 140 and the other day I noticed my tobacco basslet had a deformed eye. It looked like a goldfish bowl around his eye. Anyway after I done some research I learnt that too many powerheads may cause nitrogen supersaturation and cause this problem to fish.
I turned off the powerheads and sure enough the eye has started to look better.

Does this mean I cannot use the 4 powerheads?

Ian

 

[jasonfrey]

Hi Ian,

that is the first i've heard of that. You might post that question to Dr. Ron Shimek and see what he thinks.

We have a lot of customers using 4 powerheads, or super high flow rates, many with high as 20x tank volume, so that should be okay.

It could be the fish is super sensitive, or possibly damaged it's eye on a rock and healed on it's own.

Sorry i didn't have more info,

jason