I Killed My Baby Boy Betta

[Whisper]

I always say, you just can't be too careful when caring for your Tropical Fish's environment and I blew it!
pH matters. It matters a great deal. Bettas, as most tripical fish, can NOT handle large instant pH changes. FACT! Be careful about that please! I knew that and I'm always very cautious about that and I still killed my little boy by being a little too careless!

I have very soft water so I must treat the water to raise the gH and KH levels to the point where my pH will be reasonably stable. This means I must treat the new water before I add it during a water change but it also means the new water will be at a higher pH level that the existing water. So, to work around this I pour the new water in (never doing more than a 20% water change of my 20 gallon tanks at a time) very slowly over a 2 hour period and always insure I don't pour it into the immediate vicinity of my betta.

Well I'm doing that and I think the baby is on the right side where I did see him only a minute ago and I pour the water in on the left side onto a leaf and don't you know my baby is right under that leaf. He saw an instant .8 pH change. Not a .2 or .4 which is about the most they can handle in an day but an INSTANT .8 pH change poured right on top of him. Instant damage done. No way to undue the damage. He was floating near the top barely hanging on 1 day later and died later that night.

This beautiful baby boy who was one of the most human trusting Bettas I've ever had died because I was not careful enough. What makes it worse is I knew better and still blew it and killed this poor boy.

 

[Fishball7]

Why do you have to make your ph and gh kh higher if betas love soft acidic water?

 

[Whisper]

Why do you have to make your ph and gh kh higher if betas love soft acidic water?

The problem is my tap water is very soft yet has a high pH of 7.6. The tap water is so soft that it has a gH level of 1 meaning it has very little of the needed minerals and a KH level of 0 which means the total hardness is so low that my tap pH level of 7.6 will crash in a week droping to around 6.2. If my pH level was at 6.2 out of the tap I would just adapt them to that and not worry about it but my tap water has a 7.6 pH but a 0 KH.

You need a KH of at least 3 to have some type of stability with pH otherwise the smallest amount of polution (uneaten foods and waste in the tank) will create a rapid drop in the pH. Ideally you would like to have a KH of 5 and a gH of 8 or 9 at least but to get that I'd have to treat the new water much more than I do now just to maintain a KH of 3 and gH of 6.

 

[CezzaXV]

I'm in much the same boat. My tap water has a pH of 7.8 but (if I recall) a GH of 2 and a KH of 0. My tank tends to hang around the 6.2-6.4 area.

Admittedly I've not been keeping fish all that long, but I tend to do relatively large water changes (20-40%) without adding any kind of fancy minerals or anything. I'm on the overstocked side so larger changes are necessary as nitrates can build up quite quickly.

I usually siphon my water back in, so the change is (relatively) gradual and it also doesn't disturb my substrate. Might be worth thinking about for the future? You could easily set up a drip system so that the water is added back in gradually over several hours.

 

[Fishy friend2]

I'm sorry for your loss. your Betta will be dearly missed

 

[Fishball7]

The problem is my tap water is very soft yet has a high pH of 7.6. The tap water is so soft that it has a gH level of 1 meaning it has very little of the needed minerals and a KH level of 0 which means the total hardness is so low that my tap pH level of 7.6 will crash in a week droping to around 6.2. If my pH level was at 6.2 out of the tap I would just adapt them to that and not worry about it but my tap water has a 7.6 pH but a 0 KH.

You need a KH of at least 3 to have some type of stability with pH otherwise the smallest amount of polution (uneaten foods and waste in the tank) will create a rapid drop in the pH. Ideally you would like to have a KH of 5 and a gH of 8 or 9 at least but to get that I'd have to treat the new water much more than I do now just to maintain a KH of 3 and gH of 6.

Thanks for that. I think a gh between 3 and 8 would be great for betta and ph of even 7.6 would be fine. In a big enough tank and lightly stock I'd imagine the kh and ph wouldn't crash as badly, but would rather decrease gradually. The only thing would be during water changes that higher ph is introduced again, even slowly there would be a change. I reread your post and you said there was a ph increase. after a water change does the ph go higher than 7.6?

Sorry for your fish. Maybe you can make a drip using a raised bucket for your procedure next time.

 

[Whisper]

The problem is my tap water is very soft yet has a high pH of 7.6. The tap water is so soft that it has a gH level of 1 meaning it has very little of the needed minerals and a KH level of 0 which means the total hardness is so low that my tap pH level of 7.6 will crash in a week droping to around 6.2. If my pH level was at 6.2 out of the tap I would just adapt them to that and not worry about it but my tap water has a 7.6 pH but a 0 KH.

You need a KH of at least 3 to have some type of stability with pH otherwise the smallest amount of polution (uneaten foods and waste in the tank) will create a rapid drop in the pH. Ideally you would like to have a KH of 5 and a gH of 8 or 9 at least but to get that I'd have to treat the new water much more than I do now just to maintain a KH of 3 and gH of 6.

Thanks for that. I think a gh between 3 and 8 would be great for betta and ph of even 7.6 would be fine. In a big enough tank and lightly stock I'd imagine the kh and ph wouldn't crash as badly, but would rather decrease gradually. The only thing would be during water changes that higher ph is introduced again, even slowly there would be a change. I reread your post and you said there was a ph increase. after a water change does the ph go higher than 7.6?

Sorry for your fish. Maybe you can make a drip using a raised bucket for your procedure next time.

Sorry for the delay in my response. Yes, I am using Baking Soda to increase the KH of my water and baking soda will bond with any free ions in the water raising the pH. So the new water before it is in my tank gets as high as 7.8 to 8.0. But when I add it slowly the tank will average at 7.6. I just have to be carefull not to pour that new water directly on the Betta which is what accidently happened to kill my little boy.

It's a 20 gallon tank and I'm down to only doing 10% water changes so that they don't see any significant pH change right after the water change. The 7.6 is fine but I have to add the baking soda to raise the KH to three. If it drops below that, the pH will start dropping too fast to stabilize with weekly water changes.

 

[micko]

Ah that's sad.

I killed one of my betta's I raised myself last night. I moved a piece of bogwood and dropped it by accident.
Your not the only one.

 

[Tolak]

A 20% water change on a 20 gallon tank is 4 gallons. Aerate 4 gallons of water for a couple of days & see if the pH drops. Most water companies like to see alkaline water run through their system, acidic water is murder on their distribution system.

In the wild fish go through a pH shift of 1.0 to 2.0 during a 24 hour period on a regular basis. This is due to the day/night cycle & how plants react to to that, as well as periods of drought followed by heavy rainfall. Most pH shock is not that at all, rather it is hardness shock, and the fish having difficulty dealing with trying to balance osmotic pressure differences. A pH shift of 0.8 is really no big deal at all, as long as it is not accompanied by a change in hardness.

 

[Whisper]

A 20% water change on a 20 gallon tank is 4 gallons. Aerate 4 gallons of water for a couple of days & see if the pH drops. Most water companies like to see alkaline water run through their system, acidic water is murder on their distribution system.

In the wild fish go through a pH shift of 1.0 to 2.0 during a 24 hour period on a regular basis. This is due to the day/night cycle & how plants react to to that, as well as periods of drought followed by heavy rainfall. Most pH shock is not that at all, rather it is hardness shock, and the fish having difficulty dealing with trying to balance osmotic pressure differences. A pH shift of 0.8 is really no big deal at all, as long as it is not accompanied by a change in hardness.

Thanks for your comments but that is exactly my problem. My tap water has no Hardness (KH=0). With a Hardness level of 0 the slightest amount of polution in the tank will drop the tap pH level of 7.6 to 6.2 in a few days. Then I have to deal with the issues of slowly bringin the pH level back to the tap level of 7.6. The problem is my water is WAY too soft. In order to have any kind of pH stability you need a KH level of 3 or greater. So in order to maintain a stable pH and a healthy hardness level I need to bring both the gH and the KH levels up.

The pH shift you are talking about with the day/night change is very gradual and in that case harmless to the fish. I killed my Betta by pouring a 1 pH difference of water right on the guy. Rapid pH changes WILL kill fish!

 

[Whisper]

A 20% water change on a 20 gallon tank is 4 gallons. Aerate 4 gallons of water for a couple of days & see if the pH drops. Most water companies like to see alkaline water run through their system, acidic water is murder on their distribution system.

In the wild fish go through a pH shift of 1.0 to 2.0 during a 24 hour period on a regular basis. This is due to the day/night cycle & how plants react to to that, as well as periods of drought followed by heavy rainfall. Most pH shock is not that at all, rather it is hardness shock, and the fish having difficulty dealing with trying to balance osmotic pressure differences. A pH shift of 0.8 is really no big deal at all, as long as it is not accompanied by a change in hardness.

Tolak, I forgot to add that you are right in that if I Aerate the tap water after I add the gH and KH increasing chemicals (basically Epson Salt, and Baking soda respectively) the pH will drop. Works like this:
Tap is at 7.6 pH, gH =2, KH =0. I add the Epson Salt to raise the gH to 6 and the Baking Soda to raise the KH to 3. But the Baking soda also raises the pH to about 8.2. these changes are almost instant. If I let it sit for a few days the pH will come back down to about 7.8. I'll have to check to see if the KH drops along with that and I really hate leaving that 4 gallons of water laying around for several days before using it in the water change but you may be onto something in that if the KH stays constant around 3, that could relieve my problem of large pH differences with the new water used for the water change.

 

[Tolak]

Check out post #9 here. I'm just trying to present ways to make it easier, as well as more consistent as far as water parameters are concerned. Soft water with a low pH is fine for bettas, and you might find with good aeration the tap water in the bucket drops to near the lower level in a day or so without the need to add any buffers such as you are.