Finally Figured It Out

[KrystaK]

I feel bad for putting my fish through this. But when I got the tank I only bought tests for Nitrate, Nitrate and Ammonia. I finally ran out of test solution for Nitrate today so I went ahead and bought the API Master kit. pH was through the roof, I feel pretty bad for my mollies, which I heard prefered liker 7.5 or something?... 8.0-8.2 is much to high for them But the BF just picked up some pHdown and I'll get it later tonight so this should the beginning of a better age for them .
Then it occurred to me, is 0 the ideal number across the chart?

Just to see, I may not be reading the colors right, I read these tests as
ph: off the chart
High pH: about 8.0ish
Ammonia: 0-.25
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
btw... 0 is what we want for all of this right?

 

[soybean]

Two things:

1) How long has your tank been running? I take it you're trying to cycle it?
2) Do that nitrate test again. Shake the bottle til your arm is about to come out of its socket, whack the bottom of the bottle on a table a few times, give it a good shake again, and repeat the test. Settling can occur in nitrate test bottles which gives dodgy results.

Cycled tanks shouldn't give a 0 reading for nitrate - more likely to have something around the 10-20 mark.

A trace of ammonia indicates your tank is not cycled, so you should be doing extra large water changes to get that down.

You're looking for 0,0,10-20ish.

 

[Akasha72]

I'm no expert by any means (I'm still a newbie but I'm a little less clueless than I was a week ago)

I've been having the same tests done at P@H and as I understand it the Ammonia needs to be zero as does the nitrite but the nitrate needs to be up a bit - soybean told me somewhere between 10 and 20.

Shout you more experienced peeps if I've got that wrong

 

[soybean]

Oh and another thing - don't bother messing with the ph. It's better to have a stable ph, even if it's slightly outside of the 'ideal' range for a fish, than to mess about with lowering it. You can't keep it stable enough with that stuff, what with water changes etc, and a swinging ph does more harm than one which is too high.

Mollies are pretty adaptable, don't worry about it.

 

[Akasha72]

you type quicker than me soybean!!

 

[HayzH]

its a good idea to test your Tap water too, as some place indicate Ammonia and Nitrates in there. Also good to know your true PH, so you know W/C's will bring it down if needed. x

 

[three-fingers]

Also, mollies LOVE a high pH like that. Mollies can even thrive in marine tanks, but prefer brackish (mix of salt and fresh water). 8.2 is ideal! DONT USE pH down! It will just complicate matters .

 

[Dieses Madchen]

+1 on leaving your pH alone. I almost killed my entire tank 5 months ago trying to play chemist. Its best to just leave well enough alone.

 

[Lufbramatt]

High ph just means your water is alkaline rather than acid. Almost impossible to do anything about that, just embrace it and keep fish that thrive in a high ph, like mollies or rift valley cichlids trying to alter it without a lot of knowledge and commitment to keeping stable will just create more problems than it solves.

 

[Dieses Madchen]

A well cycled filter will also help with high pH. My tap water pH is 8.8. After 24 hours it is down to 7.2

 

[three-fingers]

To add to the above I'd like to say your test results are great, but like Soybean says, really shake that nitrate bottle! I always hit the bottle off the edge of a desk or on a wall, as there is a dark particulate that accumulates on the bottom of the bottle, and if you don't mix it around properly it gives an inaccurate test result.

However, if you have live plants that are growing well, this would explain the 0ppm nitrate result, as they basically use nitrate as food .