The mystery of how tap water in the Berryfields subdivision came to show a nitrate reading labelled “impossible” by council staff, is no closer to being solved.
Berryfields resident Sheena Blackmore was left devastated after she lost almost her entire tank full of tropical fish following a routine water change last month, and she says she was not the only one who had fish affected.
Sheena says she is meticulous when it comes for caring for her nearly 1000L tank and does a 25 per cent water change every Sunday.
“Just after the floods I did a water change, my normal cycle. The tank will normally go cloudy for around 24-48 hours,” she says.
Sheena and her partner were heading away for a few days on Wednesday, and that morning her partner woke her saying, “babe your tank is not looking good, your parrotfish are on the bottom of the tank.”
Sheena says her tank was still cloudy, which was unusual, and one of her parrotfish, which she had for more than six years, was dead on the bottom of the tank.
“I was really upset, I cried.”
Friends who were petsitting sent her a photo the following day, two more parrotfish and her Jack Dempsey were also dead.
“To lose them all in one go, I have no words, I had no idea what was wrong, I am so careful with them.”
Returning home on Sunday 28 August, a week after the water change, she took a sample of tank water to her local pet store to find out what went wrong. Sheena says the nitrate levels were found to be double what they normally are.
“My nitrates normally spike up to 80mg/L by the end of the week due to how much waste my tropical fish produce because they are so big. Normally after a water change they are around 10-20 mg/L.”
She says the nitrate levels in her tank water sample were sitting around 160mg/L on the testing chart.
“We all couldn’t believe it because I have been a customer for years and never ever had high nitrate problems like this before.”
She then went home to get a sample of water from the taps to test, the reading for this came in around 80 mg/L on the testing chart, a far reach from the usual 10-20 mg/L reading they normally see, something Tasman District Council says is “difficult to see how this level was recorded”.
Petmart staff say they saw an increase in people having issues with their fish tank water within the Berryfields area following the floods.
“In monitoring the supply over the flood event there was nothing recorded of anything out of the ordinary being sent to consumers,” TDC communications manager Chris Choat says.
He says, while there was a recorded “spike” in nitrates for around two hours on one day, it was at the source and dropped away very quickly.
“It was a spike lasting two hours reaching 38mg/l at its highest.”
Discussions are now underway to figure out how the water could’ve spike at Sheena’s, and potentially other properties in the area.
Sheena has since had two more samples tested of water from both her tank and her tap. The tap water showed higer than normal readings for more than two weeks, but is now back to normal range.
Chris says after speaking with staff they are confident that it is not due to anything they have done to the water supply and will be following up.
“People with concerns about the quality of their water should make contact with us.”
