Questioning More Advice From The Lfs

[marleth]

After my recent post, I decided to put some more lfs advice to the scrutiny of my fellow TFF posters.

1) When I bought my glofish from them to use as starter fish, they also recommended I buy a Buffer-Up Conditioner (Sodium Bicarbonate, hmm now that I'm reading the sole ingredient, could I have just bought baking soda from the grocery store?) and a Neutral Regulator (ingredients not listed but it's supposed to be adjusting low or high pH to 7.0). They made this recommendation because the water I took in had a high pH, and they said the tap water in my area of town tended to be high. Therefore, both products should be used at each water change. Most recent readings are at the end of this post.

2) I wanted to get my own testing kit to track the cycling process, and he immediately recommended the API Master test kit, I didn't want to spend $40 for it at that time, and I had just bought the API Ammonia test kit from a big chain pet store. I had a gift card to there. Won't buy fish there, but figured supplies would be ok. I have a little 2.5G tank for a Betta, and I wanted to know when I needed to change it's water. So, instead of the Master test kit, I grabbed the box for just the Nitrate Test Kit. He said that Freshwater tanks only need to worry about Ammonia and pH, so he recommended I get the pH test kit. I still have some 5-way test strips that measure pH, so I didn't buy anything except some algae discs and 2 more fish - an otocinclus and a Honey Sunset Blue Dwarf Guarami. I couldn't but wonder why he didn't just recommend those 2 test to begin with, so I figured I should post.

Other than a bit of new tank syndrome which I am treating, what information do I need to rectify while waiting for my 10G to finish cycling before adding more fish?

Having trouble with the color matching, so will give reading in ranges.
pH: somewhere between 7.0 and 7.5, probably closer to 7.0
Alk: somewhere close to 80 ppm
TH: 0
Ammonia: between .25 and .5 (Doing daily 25% water changes and only feeding every other day. Didn't fishless cycle , so we'll have to wait that one out).

 

[rabbut]

The Buffer up product will increase the pH as it will also increase the KH. The pH nutral won't work long-term in a hard water area, so I'd leave both out if your pH is high. Adjusting the the pH will 9 time out of 10 lead to a fluctuating pH which is far worse than one that is stable outside the ideal range. Do yourself a favor and ditch the pH adjusting products, as they are only "quick-fixes" that IMO do more harm than good.

Adding fish wasn't a good idea. You have increased the load on the tank, and thus the ammount of ammonia and nitrite in your system. This increases the risk to the fish and increases the chances of further complications. Please, for the welfare of the fish, don't add any more fish untill both ammonia and nitrite have read zero for at least a week Ottos don't like new tanks, so don't expect him/her to last long

If anything, nitrIte and pH are the most important to a well established tank. Nitrite will crop up with a filter fault before ammonia supposidly, as the nitrite oxidising bacteria are more delicate than the ammonia oxidising ones (in theory, not nessisarily in practice). In a new tank however, things are different. Ammonia and nitrite become most important Stop worrying about the pH, it will only become a problem if you try to change it. The ammonia and soon nitrite will be more of a concern.

I'd have got the master kit. You at this stage want to test everything, and will also want everything when you hit any problems later. Problems are the reason why you keep a kit to hand once the tank is fully cycled. The individual boxes are great if you run out of one before the others, but otherwise, you are best with a master kit at start-up

HTH
Rabbut