An interesting thought concerning cigarette smoke and my fish tank...

i would think that water would absorb smoke . just a thought from the past ever seen bong water not pretty just my 2 cents

 

I don't think that you can compare filtering pot smoke through water to cigarette smoke that lingers in the air

 

rofl

 

I found a couple interesting and alarming things here.

"Many pollutants can easily enter your tank and lead to the demise of your fish. Cigarette smoke, air fresheners, deodorants and fly spray can enter your tank via the air pump and will quickly wipe out an entire tank full of fish."

Air pump....our skimmers!!! (Or at least that's the way mine works)

A couple side notes in that article:

"Cleaners can permeate the silicon rubber that holds the tank together and then leach out killing your fish. The same applies to washing your hands then putting them in the tank. Soap residue remaining on your hands will also quickly kill your fish."

"Recent findings indicate that fish tanks are breeding grounds for salmonella, so ensure you wash your hands thoroughly after messing around in your tank."

Here is another one...

"Pollutants in the air quickly enter the water, so anything you can smell could potentially end up in the aquarium water. Avoid things like insecticides, perfumes and cigarette smoke around an aquarium. The level of contaminant builds up in fish tissues to a much greater level than found in the surrounding water."

Now while some of us, myself included, might say "yea I smoked around my fish tank and never noticed anything wrong," well who knows? Maybe there was. I had a Tomato Clown die a few weeks ago (although I wasn't back to smoking inside my apartment by then) for no apparent reason.

Think about if there have been any unknown fish deaths in YOUR tank. You tested the water, everything checked out, the fish was eating the day before, wasn't getting harassed...

It sounds kind of dismal and dangerous to me. I guess I'm back to smoking outside. I'm serious. Besides, it's starting to warm up here in Denver anyways.

 

I'm glad that you've decided to smoke outside from now on (certainly will make your house smell better) but I think that you're overthinking this. There are a ton of smokers in the hobby and in the many years that I've been perusing the various hobbiest boards, I have never heard of anyone who had any "real" issues attributable to cigarette smoke. We all lose fish for "mysterious" reasons but I doubt very much that nicotine had much, if anything to do with it.

 

I think we can safely say that smoke does leach into the system no matter how much.

Second hand smoke anyone?

I think your making a very responsible choice in smoking outside.

 

Oh, I don't doubt that it does leach into our systems but I firmly believe that our skimmers and carbon are removing it.

 

Hmm, that's a good point actually. But if the smoke is going in through the top of the tank, then it still has time to linger before it makes it down to the skimmer to be removed, right?

 

I think now that your smoking outside you should put your tank on the Patch. Or it will have nic withdraw. Are you fish irritable and crabby

J

 

Well, part of the argument is that the smoke is being sucked in through our air intakes (via airpumps and skimmer intakes), not through the top of the tank so I don't think that the smoke lingering on the water's surface is really an issue. I mean, we do have some increased circulation at the surface of our tanks in order to increase oxygen exchange but I doubt that there is enough of an exchange being made where you'd end up with too much oxygen in the tank or a heck of alot of nicotine.