Oh No!

[TammyLiz]

Did a check on my stats in my 55 gallon tank this afternoon and this is what I got:
ammonia 1
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
ph 6.0

WHAT?!?

my tap has a ph of 6.8

The ph was the first thing I tested and I just about died. 6.0 is the lowest the test will go so who knows where it is, really.
I did a water change several days ago and didn't bother to test then because it seemed like just a routine thing, but I guess I should have tested.

I have:
5 x 3" gouramis
soilmaster substrate
newly planted
1 med piece driftwood
penguin biowheel filter

I use tapwater for my water changes and add a chlorine/cloramine remover that I got from Wal-mart a few years ago. Didn't think it would expire, could this be it? Didn't have tanks set up for a while and this is from before. Now that I think about it, it might even be around 7 years old since I had for a while and was using it with my old tanks.
My tap has really low KH, does this cause the PH to drop?

I checked my 2 gallon tank, too. It has some gravel which I had previously decided must be buffering the water up because its ph stays around 7.5 even though its 6.8 when I add it. So the stats for that today:
ph 7.5
ammonia 0 (maybe a little something but too close to 0 to be sure)
nitrite 0
nitrate 0 (also, maybe a little something but too close to 0 to be sure)
stock: 3 white cloud mountain minnows, 1 black mystery snail

Of course I could be reading the test wrong but there may be something wrong with the biological filter in there, too. I would expect a much higher nitrate reading in there. I haven't done a water change in over a week. How are these readings even possible?

These are new tanks so things won't be perfectly balanced yet, but this is not what I expected.

The 55 got started a couple weeks ago when I moved the stock and the filter from a 10 gallon tank (3 gouramis, then added 2 more when I moved them). Thought I would use the old filter to seed the new one in the 55 and assumed things would be fine since the bioload wasn't increasing that much. Detected ammonia in very low amounts shortly thereafter but thought it would sort out fairly quickly and didn't test the other things. Obviously you can do everything right and still end up with a mess on your hands. Lesson learned, test more often. I did test on the 10 gallon a lot and it was very stable. It had that same gravel so ph 7.5, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10. Results the same every time I tested it. BUT, I didn't really change the water in there much at all. In fact I think I only did once. So it doesn't rule out the water conditioner as the problem.

So the changes I will make are:
Get a different water conditioner
Do something to buffer the water

Which water conditioner?
What should I buffer the water with?
What should I do in the meantime for my fish? I looked closely at them and they have normal behavior but there may be a little bit of red on them. I think this is something that can come from ammonia poisoning, true? I feel sooo bad! All my cycling work down the drain, too! How could all the stats in there be so close to zero? I would expect either higher ammonia or higher nitrates.

So confused! Please help!

 

[WILDER]

I would ask a mod to move this for you to the beginner section, good luck.

 

[TammyLiz]

I would ask a mod to move this for you to the beginner section, good luck.

Oh, come on. You could have given me some advice instead of just telling me to get it moved. I think it is an emergency. I am about to pack my 2 year old into the car and go to the store to buy another water conditioner so I can do a water change. I DO know how the cycle works, by the way.

 

[tttnjfttt]

Two things to do here. First is figure out what caused your tank to go into a mini-cycle (and the pH crash). Is there any chance something got into your tank, such as a cleaning chemical? was anything sprayed near it? Have you recently added new fish, or cleaned out your filter? Have you recently changed a carbon cartrige that has been in the tank for a while? I haven't heard of water dechlorinators going bad, but you never know.

Now onto how to cure it. You are going to have to go through the cycle the tank again, however, you are not starting over. There probably is some surviving bacteria. Daily water changes, or even bi-daily water changes until the ammonia is back under control.

 

[pokagon55]

The ammnoia will be less toxic at 6.0 for the ph, you can have up to 3ppm for the level of your ph. So I don't think that it would be ammoina poisoning. Here try this linkhttp/www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html it is very informative about ph

 

[steelhealr]

In this rare situation, I think it pays to get a dKh test kit and see where your buffering capacity lies. DO NOT try to rapidly bring the tank back to normal parameters. Ammonia, NH3 in and acidic environment, will pick up a proton and become ammonium, NH4+. This ion is less toxic. If you suddenly raise the pH, it will change ammonium back to ammonia and potentially increase the levels of ammonia.

Are you consistent with water changes? I have a low kH too...what is your number? Sometimes there ARE indications to slightly buffer the water. SH

 

[TammyLiz]

Two things to do here. First is figure out what caused your tank to go into a mini-cycle (and the pH crash). Is there any chance something got into your tank, such as a cleaning chemical? was anything sprayed near it? Have you recently added new fish, or cleaned out your filter? Have you recently changed a carbon cartrige that has been in the tank for a while? I haven't heard of water dechlorinators going bad, but you never know.

Now onto how to cure it. You are going to have to go through the cycle the tank again, however, you are not starting over. There probably is some surviving bacteria. Daily water changes, or even bi-daily water changes until the ammonia is back under control.

No chance of a cleaning chemical. I don't use windex or anything and have seperate buckets for my water changes. I haven't changed the filter media recently, about a month old. I was thinking about changing it soon. I'm still on the original cartridge. No new fish but I did add some plants 4 days ago. Don't think that would make a difference. I do hope you're right and that I am not totally starting over.

The ammnoia will be less toxic at 6.0 for the ph, you can have up to 3ppm for the level of your ph. So I don't think that it would be ammoina poisoning. Here try this linkhttp/www.bestfish.com/oldtank.html it is very informative about ph

I had read that before but it was worth a re-read because of the explanation on the ammonia and low ph, but I can't see how this is what happened in my tank seeing as I didn't have rising nitrates. Not an old tank but have done a 30% weekly water change. Probably way more than I really need to with this low stock.

In this rare situation, I think it pays to get a dKh test kit and see where your buffering capacity lies. DO NOT try to rapidly bring the tank back to normal parameters. Ammonia, NH3 in and acidic environment, will pick up a proton and become ammonium, NH4+. This ion is less toxic. If you suddenly raise the pH, it will change ammonium back to ammonia and potentially increase the levels of ammonia.

Are you consistent with water changes? I have a low kH too...what is your number? Sometimes there ARE indications to slightly buffer the water. SH

I did pick up some new chlorine remover, I got Seachem Prime. Sounds like good stuff. My plan was to do a 50% water change to rid some of the ammonia, using this stuff on the replacement water instead of the old dechlorinator I had. Judging by what you are saying, though, maybe this is a bad idea, as the replacement water would bring up the PH. The fish are acting fine now and only one has a small red line near the caudal fin. Not sure if it is from the ammonia or not. I will do a 10% water change instead and hopefully you will give me an idea of what I should do next. I don't have a dKh test kit, but I have some test strips that have a kh indicator on them. I will use one of those and post the results.
Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it. This stuff with low KH is all new to me. When I lived with my parents years ago I had five tanks but they had super hard water and the ph would shoot through the roof because of the buffering capacity. Very different. Africans loved it.

 

[tttnjfttt]

Generally, your water changes are fine as long as they are 25% or less, so you could probably get away with a little larger than 10%.

Even though ammonia is less toxic with a lower pH, it is still dangerous. I would seriously question any web page that tells you ammonia at any level is safe.

 

[newfishaddict]

Did a check on my stats in my 55 gallon tank this afternoon and this is what I got:
ammonia 1
nitrite 0
nitrate 0
ph 6.0

WHAT?!?

my tap has a ph of 6.8

The ph was the first thing I tested and I just about died. 6.0 is the lowest the test will go so who knows where it is, really.
I did a water change several days ago and didn't bother to test then because it seemed like just a routine thing, but I guess I should have tested.

I have:
5 x 3" gouramis
soilmaster substrate
newly planted
1 med piece driftwood
penguin biowheel filter

I use tapwater for my water changes and add a chlorine/cloramine remover that I got from Wal-mart a few years ago. Didn't think it would expire, could this be it? Didn't have tanks set up for a while and this is from before. Now that I think about it, it might even be around 7 years old since I had for a while and was using it with my old tanks.
My tap has really low KH, does this cause the PH to drop?

I checked my 2 gallon tank, too. It has some gravel which I had previously decided must be buffering the water up because its ph stays around 7.5 even though its 6.8 when I add it. So the stats for that today:
ph 7.5
ammonia 0 (maybe a little something but too close to 0 to be sure)
nitrite 0
nitrate 0 (also, maybe a little something but too close to 0 to be sure)
stock: 3 white cloud mountain minnows, 1 black mystery snail

Of course I could be reading the test wrong but there may be something wrong with the biological filter in there, too. I would expect a much higher nitrate reading in there. I haven't done a water change in over a week. How are these readings even possible?

These are new tanks so things won't be perfectly balanced yet, but this is not what I expected.

The 55 got started a couple weeks ago when I moved the stock and the filter from a 10 gallon tank (3 gouramis, then added 2 more when I moved them). Thought I would use the old filter to seed the new one in the 55 and assumed things would be fine since the bioload wasn't increasing that much. Detected ammonia in very low amounts shortly thereafter but thought it would sort out fairly quickly and didn't test the other things. Obviously you can do everything right and still end up with a mess on your hands. Lesson learned, test more often. I did test on the 10 gallon a lot and it was very stable. It had that same gravel so ph 7.5, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10. Results the same every time I tested it. BUT, I didn't really change the water in there much at all. In fact I think I only did once. So it doesn't rule out the water conditioner as the problem.

So the changes I will make are:
Get a different water conditioner
Do something to buffer the water

Which water conditioner?
What should I buffer the water with?
What should I do in the meantime for my fish? I looked closely at them and they have normal behavior but there may be a little bit of red on them. I think this is something that can come from ammonia poisoning, true? I feel sooo bad! All my cycling work down the drain, too! How could all the stats in there be so close to zero? I would expect either higher ammonia or higher nitrates.

So confused! Please help!

This is so strange I wonder about an incorrect reading of the test(s). Do you have the drops or strips? I find with strips they are hard to read. And with drops I would recommend doing a few "trial" tests with your tap water, and then compare you results with your water company’s lab results.

My drop tests (Hagen) are tricky to read, they say to hold it flat against the scale, if you do this without MASSIVE amounts of light behind you then the tests read high, if you hold the test away from the scale(not touching the paper the scale is printed on) then it reads very low. To get the best reading I found I need to hold the test tube against the paper as the instructions suggest BUT I need to take the reading from the lighter half of the test tube....worded another way, when I read my tests half of the test tube is dark(shadow) half is lighter(no shadow) due to the lighting, and I read the test from the lighter (non-shadowed) side of the test.

 

[TammyLiz]

OK. Results of my test strip (I was using drops before.)
Are you sitting down?

nitrate 20
nitrite 0
gh 300
kh 0
ph lower than 6.2

The ph ranges from a light peachy color at 6.2 to a dark red at 8.4. My result was a bright yellow.
For the KH, my result matched perfectly with the '0' option.

I am encouraged that it showed nitrates. Maybe my bio filter is partially still intact. Those strips don't test ammonia. I tested once more with my liquid ammonia test and the result was even higher!

ammonia 1
It says it measures both NH3 and NH+4.

There is a plant in there that didn't make it and defoliated yesterday. Moneywort. Might be the reason for the ammonia spike? My swordplant has three browning leaves, too. I heard recently that petsmart grows their swords emersed and that is where I got this one so I might just get rid of it. It might be forever before it looks good, if it ever does. The new leaves are all crinkley. Taking those two plants out now and doing a 20% water change. Sound good?
Surely I need something to buffer my water. What should I use?

 

[tttnjfttt]

I would bet the dying/decaying plants are the source of the ammonia. If you want something to buffer the water, you can try adding a little crushed coral to the filter. However, first I would get the ammonia issues delt with. THat may also help with your pH problems.

 

[TammyLiz]

My drop tests (Hagen) are tricky to read, they say to hold it flat against the scale, if you do this without MASSIVE amounts of light behind you then the tests read high, if you hold the test away from the scale(not touching the paper the scale is printed on) then it reads very low. To get the best reading I found I need to hold the test tube against the paper as the instructions suggest BUT I need to take the reading from the lighter half of the test tube....worded another way, when I read my tests half of the test tube is dark(shadow) half is lighter(no shadow) due to the lighting, and I read the test from the lighter (non-shadowed) side of the test.

I read my liquid tests the same way you do. I feel confident that they work because they were showing normal readings before. The kit is a month old. I agree that the strips are harder to read and I think they are a little less accurate.

I would bet the dying/decaying plants are the source of the ammonia. If you want something to buffer the water, you can try adding a little crushed coral to the filter. However, first I would get the ammonia issues delt with. THat may also help with your pH problems.

Yes, I would think decaying plants could do it. I didn't think this one would hurt to wait a day, but I guess that was ignorance. This is my first planted tank. This was three stems about 2-3" tall. Very teeny. Probably ten little moneywort leaves fell off. It was a bit of plant that was healthy that I saved from a plant that had suffered before I got my brighter lights. And the swordplant had one brown leaf and one partially brown. I just didn't know it was that serious that it would cause that much ammonia so fast!

Anyways, it is taken care of now. I did a 20% water change and removed the moneywort and the leaves off of the swordplant. I am going to give the swordplant one more chance to put off a nice looking leaf. Then it goes if the next one looks crinkled up.

Tomorrow I will try to find time to post a pic of this tank so you can see. I am quite proud of it even though it looks extremely new. I have pics now but they are way too big to post and I don't want to mess with the files.

Thanks again everyone for the help. I feel flattered that you all are interested and care about what happens to my fish.

EDIT: I am planning on doing another 20% change tomorrow. Is this what I should do? Or is the change of the form of ammonia too great of a risk?

 

[steelhealr]

Just be careful and watch your ammonia levels and I wouldn't do mor than 20%. After you correct what's wrong, keep an eye on the pH. If it continually drifts, you may want to buffer. I don't recommend adding anything to anyone's tank for the most part, but, it might be the case if you have a 0 kH. SH

 

[steelhealr]

Just be careful and watch your ammonia levels and I wouldn't do mor than 20%. After you correct what's wrong, keep an eye on the pH. If it continually drifts, you may want to buffer. I don't recommend adding anything to anyone's tank for the most part, but, it might be the case if you have a 0 kH. SH

 

[pokagon55]

Generally, your water changes are fine as long as they are 25% or less, so you could probably get away with a little larger than 10%.

Even though ammonia is less toxic with a lower pH, it is still dangerous. I would seriously question any web page that tells you ammonia at any level is safe.

nobody said this would be SAFE just less toxic.