General Questions?

[generkon]

Hi! So we've had the tank for 6-8 months or so, it's 30 gallons with fluorite, a bunch of plants and a piece of driftwood.

There was recently a fish die out of sorts, and all that's left at this point is:

• Four mollies
• Four panda cories
• One lonely blue gourami
• One swordtail (the other died this morning)
• a ton of snails

We've also added a fair amount of aquarium salt to battle off ich, which one of the deceased fish had. I tested the water today and it looked like the ammonia and nitrite was about 0ppm. But the pH was 8.2 and the nitrate was between 40 and 80ppm.

I'd like to get some plecos because we have a ton of algae, but the ones we got earlier both died. I'm gonna do a water change to bring down the nitrate, but I don't know what to do to lower the pH because I think the tap water here is extremely hard. The boyfriend wants to buy pH lowering conditioner, but I (A) don't want to spend the money and (B) would like a more permanent solution.

Any advice?

 

[KkAaNnEe]

Adjusting ph is a difficult task and fish react badly to significant quick changes in it too. Try more wood in the tank, but other than that i wouldnt really bother. Your best bet is to take it realllllly slow when acclimatising your fish. 2-3 hours of drip acclimatisation is fine. Check your lfs' ph to compare too.

Please dont lose sleep over one fish death in 6 months, im sure you did all you could. Try some dedicated medication for whitespot to completely get rid of it.

I have heard of a fewpeople keeping plecs in african cichlid tanks, what were the species you had before?

 

[generkon]

There's definitely been more than one fish death in the past six months, haha....

What do you mean by 2-3 hour drip acclimatisation? Is that with the pH lowering conditioner?

As for species of fish, we had some tetras at the very beginning, but other than that there's just been mollies, gouramis and a few swordtails.

 

[KkAaNnEe]

Lol ok

Well, drip acclimatisation is basically a process where your
Introducing the fish to your water. Let me guess, you normally bring fish home, float it a while and then pop it in?
Drip acc. Involves placing fish in a bucket, then tie some knots in a tube of airline or thin hose and siphon your water into the bucket. A few drips a second is fine, if you do this over a long period of time, the fish have more time to adjust to your higher ph, causing less of a 'shock'.

I meant species of pleco

 

[This Old Spouse]

Adding salt to the water will be detrimental to your cories.