In one of my previous blogs I described the importance of risk management when it comes to raising rainbowfish - Melanotaenia parva being the subject then. I thought that given the recent events which I will go on to describe, it was high time to revisit this area of fish keeping. Most of us think about risk management on a superficial level, but its not until some of our fish go belly up (literally) that we start to feel the pangs of guilt and / or regret for not implementing some sort of risk management strategy. I decided to revisit this subject because the events of last month were probably the worst I have experienced since getting in to fish keeping. It was that bad! A catalogue of events conspired to cause a mini wipeout in my display tank, which in all honesty could have been avoided. What's done is done, and there's nothing I can do about it now (tragedy that it is), but what I can do is make sure my plan for dealing with risk is more robust so that in the future I don't feel the impacts quite as severely.
What I want to do is highlight what happened, to discuss the basic theory for managing risk, and then compose a catalogue / risk register and my responses / intended responses for dealing with such risks. For the purposes of this article, I will limit the risk register to this incident and to things I would improve to reduce the impact of such events should they happen again.
So what was the issue?
Well, to cut a long story short, the filter that I use for aerating my tank got clogged and caused seven of my finest rainbows to asphyxiate. I set the filter up high enough in the water so that is breaks the surface of the water and so oxygenates the tank that way. Slowing down of the water flow is usually a strong indicator to me that this filter needs cleaned. The problem in this instance was that I wasn't home to see this happening. I left the feeding of my fish up to my sister who, as much as she loves animals, knows very little about fish (she is in no way to blame for what happened here). When I heard through her that all my fish seemed to be dying, I knew I had to get home to sort out what was happening. In this case, something that was completely avoidable caught me out. What was worse, was that I knew had I been home, I would have seen this coming a mile off. As gutted as I was to loose five of my Melanotaenia trifasciata 'Habgood River' and two male Chilatherina Bleheri I can assure you that I was somewhat relieved that my losses weren't greater. When I came home that night and saw my tank I realised I was on the verge of loosing every fish in it. I knew exactly what was wrong, but I still panicked somewhat. I worked fast, knowing that I had to get oxygen into the tank immediately. I raised the filter in the water a little and grabbed an air pump and a few airstones and pumped air into the tank. I immediately carried out and initial 25% water change (with tap safe added) to get oxygen into the tank as fast as possible. This visibly helped a lot as the fish became less skittish, they moved smoother and weren't hugging the surface quite so much. I then carried out an additional 50% water change. Thankfully there were no further losses.
On reflection though the questions that I wanted to answer was how I could avoid something like this happening again in the future, or at least how could I reduce severity of the impact and the liklihood of occurrence. It's so hard to get good rainbowfish stock and I had worked hard to get quality fish. Risk management is something I need to do better at because I don't want something like this to happen again!
What I want to do is highlight what happened, to discuss the basic theory for managing risk, and then compose a catalogue / risk register and my responses / intended responses for dealing with such risks. For the purposes of this article, I will limit the risk register to this incident and to things I would improve to reduce the impact of such events should they happen again.
So what was the issue?
Well, to cut a long story short, the filter that I use for aerating my tank got clogged and caused seven of my finest rainbows to asphyxiate. I set the filter up high enough in the water so that is breaks the surface of the water and so oxygenates the tank that way. Slowing down of the water flow is usually a strong indicator to me that this filter needs cleaned. The problem in this instance was that I wasn't home to see this happening. I left the feeding of my fish up to my sister who, as much as she loves animals, knows very little about fish (she is in no way to blame for what happened here). When I heard through her that all my fish seemed to be dying, I knew I had to get home to sort out what was happening. In this case, something that was completely avoidable caught me out. What was worse, was that I knew had I been home, I would have seen this coming a mile off. As gutted as I was to loose five of my Melanotaenia trifasciata 'Habgood River' and two male Chilatherina Bleheri I can assure you that I was somewhat relieved that my losses weren't greater. When I came home that night and saw my tank I realised I was on the verge of loosing every fish in it. I knew exactly what was wrong, but I still panicked somewhat. I worked fast, knowing that I had to get oxygen into the tank immediately. I raised the filter in the water a little and grabbed an air pump and a few airstones and pumped air into the tank. I immediately carried out and initial 25% water change (with tap safe added) to get oxygen into the tank as fast as possible. This visibly helped a lot as the fish became less skittish, they moved smoother and weren't hugging the surface quite so much. I then carried out an additional 50% water change. Thankfully there were no further losses.
On reflection though the questions that I wanted to answer was how I could avoid something like this happening again in the future, or at least how could I reduce severity of the impact and the liklihood of occurrence. It's so hard to get good rainbowfish stock and I had worked hard to get quality fish. Risk management is something I need to do better at because I don't want something like this to happen again!
See above one of my male Melanotaenia trifasciata 'Habgood River' - this guy didn't make it.
The Basics of Risk Management
Risk Management essentially about managing potential impacts that will have a detrimental effect and could potentially prevent us from achieving our objectives, whatever those may be. It helps us to understand the risks that were face so that we can prioritise and develop strategical responses to the risks that we need to look after, enabling us to implement some sort of a strategy to ensure were are safeguarded against them. I have several objectives in my fishkeeping that I want to be safeguarded against such as:
As you can inevitably deduce, a potential wipeout in my main show tank would seriously impact on all of these objectives - some more than others. It can be easy to become discouraged, especially when you put a lot of effort into something and one perfectly avoidable mistake costs you all that work. This essentially brings us to the very heart of risk management which is all about managing the interconnected relationship between the scale of a potential impact and its likelihood of occurrence. There are four basic questions we can ask at this point to get us really thinking about risk management on a practical level. They are:
Tolerate - the risk is acceptable, either because it is low or because it may not be worth doing anything to mitigate it. This is essentially the do very little / nothing option e.g. conducting a water change without using dechlorinator. Chlorine isn't great for adult rainbowfish, but they are way more resistant to it than some fish species.
Treat - this involves continuing with the action that causes the risk, but at the same time introducing controls that limit the affects of the risk, or having a pre-planned contingency plan that can be put into action should the risk occur. Rather than introducing chlorinated water during a water change, you could let it sit at room temperature for 24 hour for the chlorine to evaporate before putting it in the tank, or you could use some 'tap safe dechlorinator.' Thus reducing the likelihood of negative impacts on fish health or wellbeing.
Terminate - Doing things differently and therefore removing the risk completely. E.g. use rainwater - this will not have had dechlorinator added to it. You may be introducing new risks which could be lesser or greater, but the potential negative affects of chlorine will not be one of those risks.
Transfer - Transferring some aspects of the risk. e.g. keeping some fish species in a separate tank so that if a potential wipeout were to occur in my main tank that I would still be able to breed fish from my secondary tank.
As a final word on risk theory you should also note the dynamic nature of risk in that your answers to the above questions could change on a day to day basis as determined by your circumstances. For examples - observing my tanks is something I enjoy. The likelihood of me not noticing a filter malfunction is low, and if I do notice it, i'll do something about it and therefore the likely impact of a malfunction is low. However, if a filter breaks down and i'm away on holiday and not there to notice it, the potential impacts are going to be very severe indeed.
Risk Register
Please see below (attached) a copy of the beginnings of my risk register. This is by no means comprehensive, and there may be many actions you take in response to potential impacts. Hopefully though this will get us thinking, even just a little about general risks to our fish tanks. Until next time...
The Basics of Risk Management
Risk Management essentially about managing potential impacts that will have a detrimental effect and could potentially prevent us from achieving our objectives, whatever those may be. It helps us to understand the risks that were face so that we can prioritise and develop strategical responses to the risks that we need to look after, enabling us to implement some sort of a strategy to ensure were are safeguarded against them. I have several objectives in my fishkeeping that I want to be safeguarded against such as:
- I want to enjoy my fishkeeping.
- I want to create a tank with healthy fish that is aesthetically pleasing to myself.
- I want to be able to remove fish from my main show tank to be able to breed them.
- I want to be able to maintain the species I have rather than letting them get to a point where re-production is not possible e.g. all my males or females die preventing me from being able to breed them.
- I want to be able to use my enthusiasm for the hobby to encourage other people with theirs, especially to promote rainbowfish, to share knowledge and to help contribute to greater understanding of rainbowfish.
As you can inevitably deduce, a potential wipeout in my main show tank would seriously impact on all of these objectives - some more than others. It can be easy to become discouraged, especially when you put a lot of effort into something and one perfectly avoidable mistake costs you all that work. This essentially brings us to the very heart of risk management which is all about managing the interconnected relationship between the scale of a potential impact and its likelihood of occurrence. There are four basic questions we can ask at this point to get us really thinking about risk management on a practical level. They are:
- What could happen? (worst case scenario)
- How likely is it to happen? (e.g. very unlikely, unlikely, likely, very likely)
- What would be the impact if it did happen? (e.g. unnoticeable, noticeable, severe, extremely severe)
- What could I do to prevent such a thing from happening? There are essentially four ways that risk can be treated - they are the four T's of risk management. These are:
Tolerate - the risk is acceptable, either because it is low or because it may not be worth doing anything to mitigate it. This is essentially the do very little / nothing option e.g. conducting a water change without using dechlorinator. Chlorine isn't great for adult rainbowfish, but they are way more resistant to it than some fish species.
Treat - this involves continuing with the action that causes the risk, but at the same time introducing controls that limit the affects of the risk, or having a pre-planned contingency plan that can be put into action should the risk occur. Rather than introducing chlorinated water during a water change, you could let it sit at room temperature for 24 hour for the chlorine to evaporate before putting it in the tank, or you could use some 'tap safe dechlorinator.' Thus reducing the likelihood of negative impacts on fish health or wellbeing.
Terminate - Doing things differently and therefore removing the risk completely. E.g. use rainwater - this will not have had dechlorinator added to it. You may be introducing new risks which could be lesser or greater, but the potential negative affects of chlorine will not be one of those risks.
Transfer - Transferring some aspects of the risk. e.g. keeping some fish species in a separate tank so that if a potential wipeout were to occur in my main tank that I would still be able to breed fish from my secondary tank.
As a final word on risk theory you should also note the dynamic nature of risk in that your answers to the above questions could change on a day to day basis as determined by your circumstances. For examples - observing my tanks is something I enjoy. The likelihood of me not noticing a filter malfunction is low, and if I do notice it, i'll do something about it and therefore the likely impact of a malfunction is low. However, if a filter breaks down and i'm away on holiday and not there to notice it, the potential impacts are going to be very severe indeed.
Risk Register
Please see below (attached) a copy of the beginnings of my risk register. This is by no means comprehensive, and there may be many actions you take in response to potential impacts. Hopefully though this will get us thinking, even just a little about general risks to our fish tanks. Until next time...
| |