Split Tails

[ripil]

thats what i got told to do as the the water was high in ph and not one of the four neon tetras i got survived. so i got the stuff best suited for me (it cant drop the ph lower than 6.5 no matter how much you put it) tested the nitrate levels and its 12. so good for fish so after the test thats when i went down the road of following the advice given in getting the ph buffer. sorry forgot to say that the ph was tested in the lfs and they said it was high because of the coral sand i've got. so to lower it get the ph buffer although since then i've just not tried keeping tetras as using the ph buffer will lower it but then the coral sand will raise it again so it'll be worse for the fish for it to be lowered and then raised. so i have stopped using it but after i did use it and did a 50% water change then 10% water changes every 3 days the guppy got alot better. was i given wrong advice yet again?

 

[KittyKat]

thats what i got told to do as the the water was high in ph

It is not the pH which matters, but the water hardness, you might want to read this: http/aquariumadventure.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/importance-of-acclimatisation/

and not one of the four neon tetras i got survived.

Neons can live better in hard water than guppies can live in soft water. Neons were more likely to have died from lack of acclimatisation or being in a group of only 4 than from hard water, unless your water is extremely hard (pH in the region of 8.5 or over).

so i got the stuff best suited for me (it cant drop the ph lower than 6.5 no matter how much you put it) tested the nitrate levels and its 12. so good for fish so after the test thats when i went down the road of following the advice given in getting the ph buffer. sorry forgot to say that the ph was tested in the lfs and they said it was high because of the coral sand i've got. so to lower it get the ph buffer although since then i've just not tried keeping tetras as using the ph buffer will lower it but then the coral sand will raise it again so it'll be worse for the fish for it to be lowered and then raised. so i have stopped using it but after i did use it and did a 50% water change then 10% water changes every 3 days the guppy got alot better. was i given wrong advice yet again?

The advice you should have been given is "replace coral sand with a normal substrate if you want to keep neons, but you shouldn't be mixing neons with guppies anyway". What you are doing is bad for all your fish in the long term because one time you will forget to re-dose the buffer and your pH will crash from 6.5 to 8.2-8.5 in a matter of hours and that is extremely harmful to the fish because they can not adjust to the changes. In other words, you *need* to be adding a lot. It is bad for the guppies in the short and long term because they don't do well in soft water. The buffers you are adding are only dissolving your substrate, which is a waste of your money and an unnecessary risk to the fish.
I very strongly advise everyone to stay away from buffers like that, but if anyone does dabble in them, I consider it to be compulsory for that person to have a liquid pH, KH and GH test kits for the sake of their fish.

 

[ripil]

na i wasn't going to keep the neons in the same tank as the guppies. now i'm just not going to keep any sort of tetras as i thought once i add it and keep adding it, it would stay the same level 6.5 but then i checked it as it was over 7 so i've now stopped using it as the flux would of been to much for any fish (i realised that all by myself lol) then read up and realised i was right. yeah i've got pH GH and KH liquid test kits. thats how i realised that the buffer really don't equalize the pH and keep it their. but i really think me dropping the pH level with the buffer gave the guppy a chance to adjust. it went down to 6.5 like the buffer said and now its a little over 7.