Help! My Ph Is Way Too Low And My Fish Are Dying!

[crystabubble]

hiya all!

iv had my 200 lt tank now for about 3 months but i have a recent issue with my ph dropping too low. i have recently added more plants as a couple of my new fish died, (was told more plants would reduce the stress) but now quite a few of my original fish have died. a couple of my original neons looked like they had white spot so i have been treating that sucsessfully for the last week or so and then last night my beautiful angel fish just died out of the blue with no signs why!

iv been testing my waters and everything else is perfect apart from recently the ph has been fluctuating at different times of the day. i have been told that this is due to the plants "breating in and out" aty different times of the day, but i dont really know much about this and keep finding conflicting information about what could be the cause.

i have added aquarium salt (as advised in pet shop) to try to stabilise the ph but i dont really want to have to start putting in "ph up" chemicals as have been told that this will kill the plants and i have elephant nose fish so i try to avoid as many chemicals as possible with them being so sensitive.

ANY ADVICE APPRECIATED AS IM SOOOOOOO WORRIED ABOUT MY OTHER BABIES!!!!

Thanks!

 

[Rooster]

Was the tank cycled ?
And... can you post test readings please ?

 

[crystabubble]

yeah, my mate is really experienced with fish so she set it up originally and cycled it all for me (as im still quite new to this but trying to learn) but she cant understand why this is happening.

usually the ph is 6.6-6.8 but then when it is falling it is going down to about 5-5.5, the nitrite is 0ppm, nitrate is between 5-10ppm (which iv been told is fine for my size tank) and the ammonia is 0ppm. this seems to have only started happening when i added the plants so i didnt know if there was a particular type of plant that shouldnt be using.... i have an airstone but dont know if this makes a difference as i keep being asked if i have one, and i have no bogwood (as iv heard that this is another issue with ph levels)

i have slate and ornaments in the tank as well

thanks rooster

 

[crystabubble]

Anyone else got any ideas??? iv been testing the ph's and they all seem to be staying at 6.6-6.8 at the moment, but sems to drop below 5 every now and then?

if the plants "breating cycle" is to blame should i remove some of the plants or will this cause more stress to the fish if they have less places to hide??? i keep being told so may different things to try, but the aquatium salt does seem to have settled the ph a little.

one of my elephant nose fish has since died but we knew he hadnt been eating for a few weeks as he was not interested in food at all, even when the other fish were distracted with food at the other end of the tank (yet my other elephant nose is huge compared to how skinny he was!) so i dont think that his death was related to this.

any ideas???

thanks

 

[Curiosity101]

Hmm...

It isn't the plants. That's an easy call.
But what else is in the tank decoration wise?

What is your tap water pH and gH value?
To get an accurate pH measure you have to leave some tap water to stand for a few hours to allow any dissolved gases to leave the water.
For example CO2 is acidic in water so a tap pH reading straight away may read 7 but a few hours later will have gone up to 7.5 or more.

How did your friend cycle the tank exactly? And are you 100% that those test results are accurate? (I'm not saying they aren't, but you can't be too careful and it doesn't hurt to double check)

What fish are in the tank exactly?

Finally. Salt isn't necessary at all. If you want to stabilise your pH by increasing your gH (which is effectively what I think you're trying to do with salt). Then a better option is putting some crushed coral into some netting, I think nylon is the one that doesn't degrade in your tank. Slowly the crushed coral dissolves into the water, this raises your gH and therefore gives your water a larger buffering capacity. That way pH is less likely to fluctuate.

In the mean time I'd do 2 25% water changes a day for the next few days to raise the pH up slowly.

 

[crystabubble]

thankyou soooooo much for that, i keep being told so many different things i thought my head was going to explode! not the sort of thing you need when your new to the hobby, lol!

i have 1 female fighter, 1 male fighter, 1 baby knife fish, 1 elephant nose, 1 sailfin pleco, 1 male dwarf gourami, 2 female dwarf gourami, 6 neons (i did have 2 lovely angel fish, a killifish, some other female fighters at different times too but they all sadly lost their fight with the ph iv been told!)

iv become a little OCD with my water testing, i use the API kit, and i have been testing all the time.

In the tank i have some slate, 4 ornaments(which are going to be removed and replaced with more slate once the tank settles down) 6 plants (various types) and sand on the bottom, fluval 4 filter, bubble bar along the back and an airstone.

i was very new to the hobby when my friend did all the set up for me so i will speak to her tonight and find out how she did the cycling and i will test the tap water tonight.

in the meantime do you think that there is anything in the tank from the lot above that may be causing the issue???

many thanks for all your help!!!!
crystal

 

[vinylman]

I have to say that your problems may not be entirely down to ph. That's a very volatile mix of fish you have in there. I certainly wouldn't mix a Male and Female Betta. Also Neons and Angel fish don't mix; Neons are just the right size to fit in an Angel's mouth; the Neons will nip the Angels, too. The cycling may be the main problem here; if the tank wasn't cycled properly, the fish would suffer ammonia poisoning to their gills, which is permanent and the stress will leave them open to further disease. We REALLY need to know what your friend did to prepare the tank for fish.

 

[degsod]

I have to say that your problems may not be entirely down to ph. That's a very volatile mix of fish you have in there. I certainly wouldn't mix a Male and Female Betta. Also Neons and Angel fish don't mix; Neons are just the right size to fit in an Angel's mouth; the Neons will nip the Angels, too. The cycling may be the main problem here; if the tank wasn't cycled properly, the fish would suffer ammonia poisoning to their gills, which is permanent and the stress will leave them open to further disease. We REALLY need to know what your friend did to prepare the tank for fish.

I agree with above, did your friend do a fishless cycle? If not the damage could have been done a while ago. I would deffo go with the water changes.
What are the stats on your tap water?

 

[Curiosity101]

Agreed that the stocking issue needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. This may well be part of the problem.
Stress lowers the immune system and can be caused by poor tank mate choices, incorrect sized tank and bad water conditions. So that's on top of the points that vinylman made.

To answer your question, I can't see anything physical in that tank which could be causing a pH crash.
Are you sure the slate is definitely slate?

All I can think is, is that you basically have a tap water gH value of 0.
If you can get hold of a gH testing kit then this would be fab.

Also we do need tap water pH values.

Just a point, my tapwater has a gH value of 0 so I had raise it manually for awhile. But over time as the tank matures I've noticed that everything becomes a bit more stable.
And even though I have a tapwater gH value of 0 out of the tap. My pH is steady in the tank at 7.2

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with the water and stocking advice already given. You don't need any salt in there. Since you have an API kit (hopefully the freshwater one, as sometimes people discover they have the salt one!) you need to post up a full set of results of all the tests for both the tap and the tank water to give the members some baseline confirmations. A GH/KH set of results will obviously be helpful too. And I agree that the stocking issues may be the more serious issue here, although gill and/or nerve damage from cycling may be an unknown.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[crystabubble]

thankyou all for the help, i will do the tests when i get home on the tapwater. the tank readings are in my second post below.

I have been monitoring the fish closely at the moment (given the situation) but the fighters seem to be very happy together and always have, i did have 3 females to 1 male (as advised by my lfs) but the other 2 died, and i didnt want to replace them when i was having issues with the ph. The angels were also very tiny (although i realise that they would have needed to be seperated when grown) never bothered with any other fish and never left each others side and i have not had any fish nipped out of the whole tank, to be honest none of them even chase each other and never have, they are all really peaceful and seem to get on well......

my friend had the tank set up for 3-4 weeks without fish, but i will find out tonight what she actually did as im still not sure of all the details yet being new to all this.

quick question vinalman, if it was ammonia poison would that show up in the ammonia test in my kit, (sorry if this is me being a bit useless) as my ammonia test has never read any more than 0ppm???

many thanks again for all your help/advice, really appreciate it!

 

[vinylman]

I'm afraid that this is where others will be able to help you more than me, c. I was given almost a filter full of mature media when I started my tank five years ago, and I never got a measurable Ammonia reading. It's possible that because you've had the fish in there for some time that you may be partway to being cycled, in which case you'll need to watch the NitrIte measurements, too. Basically, if you get any Ammonia or NitrIte readings, it's time for water changes. As I say, I'm sure someone else can help you with the Ammonia readings. Ignore your ph for now, it's the Ammonia and Nitrite that are more important. Please don't be tempted (when everything is sorted) to get some more Neon Tetras: they'll make a real mess of the Bettas. And the Angels WILL treat the Neons as a snack when they're big enough.

 

[Curiosity101]

*sigh*

The tank stats in your post are now 6 days old and therefore not very helpful.

New ones please!
Full set for both tank and tap water(Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate and pH). If you could get hold of a gH testing kit then this would be really useful aswell.

Info on how your friend cycled the tank will be very helpful. If/when you can get it.

Just cause there may be no reading for ammonia at the mo, doesn't mean that there wasn't for awhile at some point. It also doesn't mean you didn't miss a spike at some point. Either of those circumstances can cause lasting damage to fish even once the levels are back to 0.

Your tanks stocking really isn't in any way ok in the long term. Many fish will be fine together as jouveniles. But as they grow problems begin to occur. Simply overnight you can find that fish just start 'dissappearing'.
Or, over time you will see your fish stock dwindle because although there is no agression, the fish are still stressed with their incompatible tank mates.

 

[crystabubble]

the results are the same as on the first post, they have not gone down again since posting this originally, the tests have been coming back at nitrate-10ppm , nitrite-0ppm , ammonia-0ppm , ph-6.6, but obviously i could have missed a spike in this at some point.... if this was the case what would haved caused the spike do you think, for me to try to prevent this for future???
i have left some tap water to settle as advised, ph is 7.4-7.6(bottom colour on the low level ph scale, top colour on the high level scale) nitrite - 0, ammonia - 0, nitrate - 0, and i dont know if this helps but while iv not been able to get a gh test kit my area is classed as Soft to moderately soft 0-001mg/l as Calcium Carbonate equivalent (but not sure if that is accurate enough for what you will need???)

my friend said we used mature/donated media in the filter and a small amount of ammoina but it was hitting the right levels quite soon so didnt hardly take anytime at all to cycle, but advised to leave it for the full 3-4 weeks to make sure, which seemed to work as we had no deaths for the first 2 months and the tests were always spot on what they should be, until this ph has started to fluctuate!!!
thanks

 

[Curiosity101]

Okie dokie. Well the only thing I can recommend is more frequent water changes until your tank matures enough to be stable on it's own.

OR, you could add crushed coral in a net bag to manually raise the gH of your tank water. This will give it a greater capacity for buffering.

I really can't stress how much you need to look at your stocking. Could you please just stick a post on the forum to see what others think?