Test Results

[Cossie333]

here are my tear resultes for the tank and fish in my signiture

nitrate-80
nitrite-0
ph-5.0(a little low can someone help with this?)
kh-80
gh-30

cheers jack AKA cossie333

 

[plecostomus-mad]

you need to do a water change buddy to bring that nitrate down. have you tested the ph of your water out of the tap? a ph of 5 is verylow for most if not all tropical fish.

 

[Cossie333]

k its an improvment my nitrate used to 140 last week lol

 

[Wills]

k its an improvment my nitrate used to 140 last week lol

I think that it just shows how much you need to rehome your BN. A nitrate reading of 140 is really bad, how often do you do water changes?

 

[Cossie333]

i do 30 percent water change 3 times a week and my bn is in the for sale section

 

[waterdrop]

Both the numeric results and the large variation of the 140ppm and 80ppm nitrate(NO3) readings don't make sense with 3 30% water changes per week, assuming deep gravel cleans (or surface sand cleans) were performed with each of these. What are your tap readings for ammonia, nitrite(NO2), pH and nitrate(NO3)? Is the tap water adding anything when it comes in?

You have extremely low GH and pretty low KH. The fairly low KH combined with high NO3 could be a contributor or a reason for the pH being as low as it is.

From a technical standpoint the tank looks way overstocked for a 9G/34L but it sounds like you are aware of this and trying to do something about it. I'll leave it to some of our better experts on stocking to comment more if that is needed.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[doresy]

I am agreeing with previous posters that your nitrates don't seem to make much sence.

Firstly, what testing kit are you using? Hopfully it is a API liquid one and if so then are you paying attention to the proceedure? The shaking times are very important.

As far as the PH is concerned do you have your set up loaded with bogwood?

Tiny tanks are a mother to control at the best of times but when overstocked such as yours it becomes a nightmare

 

[ajs2294]

How did you find you pH was 5.0, what test kit are you using? I know API only goes to 6.0
Also there are fish alive in the tank at 5.0 pH

 

[Cossie333]

its api test strip and it does only go to 6.0 but ts like a colour below

 

[waterdrop]

OK, that's one of the things we were worried about. Paper strip tests are worse than inaccurate, they are misleading and can lead to wrong actions. One of the very first beginner things we work on in our beginner subforum here is the finding and using of a good liquid-reagent based test kit. Many of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit but there are more accurate ones (Salifert is believed to be the best but is somewhat more complicated for beginners in that you have to buy each test individually and it uses powders.) The Nutrafin tests are also ok although one of the reasons some like the API liquid tests better is that they go to a different color at zero ppm whereas I believe the Nutrafin ones just go continuous down to zero using the same color.

At any rate this is something you need to do to get in at the ground floor.

~~waterdrop~~