Cichlids sitting at bottom of tank and breathing fast

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ok good lol
unfortunately wasn’t able to test the ph today. got very busy with exams and work. hoping for tomorrow. cichlids seem to be doing good still. aren’t breathing fast anymore and are swimming around. still think they got ich tho cuz only like 2 days ago they were rubbing their side against the sand. well 2 of them were.
 
We need the GH as well as pH as GH is the more important of the two.
 

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this
 

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No, please do not add this into the tank. You do not need it for rift lake cichlids, and it will not work anyway. I will explain.

The pH is connected to the GH and KH and also affected by CO2. The KH in particular acts as a pH buffer to prevent the pH from shifting. Only be reducing the GH and KH will the pH lower. It is "buffered" so it will stay where it is in the tap water. The higher the GH and KH, the stronger the buffering capability. This even resists any effect the CO2 might have, up to the point where the buffering ends; more on this below.

When you add these chemical products, they will (in this case) lower the pH immediately. Then over the next several hours, the buffering of the GH/KH will restore the pH to where it was. At this point, many make the mistake of adding more pH down, and the fluctuating up and down of the pH continues. This is frankly deadly for fish, as it is too large a change to rapidly. But, if it is continued, at some point, the buffering capacity of the GH/KH will be reached and the chemical could then be enough to crash the pH, and this will kill fish.

It is clear you cannot trust any advice the store employees give you. Please, for the sake of your fish, do not trust them.
 
No, please do not add this into the tank. You do not need it for rift lake cichlids, and it will not work anyway. I will explain.

The pH is connected to the GH and KH and also affected by CO2. The KH in particular acts as a pH buffer to prevent the pH from shifting. Only be reducing the GH and KH will the pH lower. It is "buffered" so it will stay where it is in the tap water. The higher the GH and KH, the stronger the buffering capability. This even resists any effect the CO2 might have, up to the point where the buffering ends; more on this below.

When you add these chemical products, they will (in this case) lower the pH immediately. Then over the next several hours, the buffering of the GH/KH will restore the pH to where it was. At this point, many make the mistake of adding more pH down, and the fluctuating up and down of the pH continues. This is frankly deadly for fish, as it is too large a change to rapidly. But, if it is continued, at some point, the buffering capacity of the GH/KH will be reached and the chemical could then be enough to crash the pH, and this will kill fish.

It is clear you cannot trust any advice the store employees give you. Please, for the sake of your fish, do not trust them.
No worries i didn’t buy that garbage.
 
okay i got it tested and on this picture the gh was 150 and the ph was 8.4. i live in wisconsin so the water is hard here.

The colours on the left column all show as black in the photo so I cannot see any of the values.

If the GH is only 150 ppm, it is pushing things for rift lake cichlids. GH at 150 ppm is equivalent to 8 dGH, for those of us who prefer this unit. It is moderately soft/hard, to use a very subjective term; it most certainly is not hard. You want a GH above this; Colin earlier suggested 300 ppm, and the lowest I have ever seen suggested is 160 (the cichlid site has 160-320 ppm for the range).

The pH at 8.4 is fine.
 
The colours on the left column all show as black in the photo so I cannot see any of the values.

If the GH is only 150 ppm, it is pushing things for rift lake cichlids. GH at 150 ppm is equivalent to 8 dGH, for those of us who prefer this unit. It is moderately soft/hard, to use a very subjective term; it most certainly is not hard. You want a GH above this; Colin earlier suggested 300 ppm, and the lowest I have ever seen suggested is 160 (the cichlid site has 160-320 ppm for the range).
what can i do to raise it then? the lady there said i needed to LOWER the gh lol i’m not listening to store employees
 
what can i do to raise it then? the lady there said i needed to LOWER the gh lol i’m not listening to store employees

We are advising you on the understanding that you have rift lake cichlid fish. These fish occur in the hardest freshwater of any tropical fish species on this planet (so far as I know). To help with the understanding...

Each species of freshwater fish has evolved over thousands of years to function in very specific water parameters, and environment too for that matter. In order for their physiology and metabolism to function well, they must have the parameters for which they are designed, with some but not usually much variation. Some fish have more ability to live outside their preferred range, and some fish have basically no such tolerance. So it is always best to know the natural habitat parameters and replicate them as closely as possible. This guarantees the fish will have an easier life just carrying out all the internal biological processes that are mandatory. As soon as say the parameters begin to move away from those the fish is designed for, it takes more energy, causes stress, and slowly weakens the fish. They become more susceptible to disease, their immune system will weaken and may even give out, and every basic life-essential process becomes more difficult. The fish never live close to their normal lifespan because of all this.

I read a very good explanation putting this into an easily understood parallel. When you drive a car on a flat road at 50 km/hour, it takes a certain amount of energy (gas) to maintain that speed. As soon as the car is travelling uphill, it takes considerably more energy to maintain the same speed. The "speed" here is the internal biological processes that the fish must carry out to maintain its life, or it will die. The increased "energy" (gas) is the additional energy the fish must devote to keep these essential processes going when it is forced into compensating; eventually the fiish can not continue, and it weakens and dies.
 

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