What In The World Is Going On With This Water?

[Ltygress]

I know very small tanks are harder to keep stable in terms of water parameters. But this one blows my mind.

My tap water is so incredibly soft, I joke that you can try skipping a stone across it, and the water would reach up, swallow the stone and it would just totally disappear. It wouldn't sink, it wouldn't skip, it would just be GONE!

The GH is usually 3 and KH is usually 1 or 2. Yeah, it's THAT soft!

PH is usually a dead 7.0. No ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates in the tap water. No copper and about 1ppm phosphate. Yep, I do ALL of those tests on my tanks.


I'm up to 24 tanks now. Some of those are one-gallons that I use for hospital tanks for small fish, such as guppies, platies, bettas, etc. My first 1-G is actually SO saturated with antibiotics, it just won't cycle. Bacteria just can't grow in there. It has registered high ammonia for 2 months with NO nitrites showing up. But it's fine, it's a hospital tank.

The newest one currently has a lot of ramshorn (pest) snails that I collected from other tanks. I put them all in there. If they can survive, great. If not, oh well. They're just going to become food for a friend's puffer fish.

However, I tested the water parameters on it today and found Ammonia high (no surprise), nitrite high (no surprise), nitrates high (no surprise), PH 6.6 (hmm, okay, came down from tap water somehow...), phosphate 5ppm (where in the world....), KH zero (yeah sometimes the KH disappears quickly in my inhabited tanks) and GH.... 25. TWENTY FIVE!

What in the heck could do that? The little acrylic tank? The SNAILS?? It was freshly set up when the snails went in. No substrate except two lava rocks used to hold zucchini down (I have to kinda sustain them until Saturday). Could the lava rocks have done it? Would they raise the phosphate too?

NOTHING has been added to this tank except an eyedropper of Seachem Stability (my water supplier uses chlorine, but it is gone by the time it gets to my tap, so the water is relatively safe and I don't use Prime). Does Stability have something in it that causes high phosphates and GH? And how in the world can my GH be 25 and my PH be 6.6?

I did all of the tests twice just to make sure, and the same results came up. It just doesn't make sense to me. Granted, the water hasn't been changed in several days. Water changes are done on Fridays, and that's not until tomorrow. And despite being a 1-gallon it probably has about 200 ramshorn snails in there. Yeah, it's overstocked, but seriously, they're a pest snail (to me). So I'm not surprised about Ammonia, Nitrites, and Nitrates. But how in the world did the PH, GH, and Phosphates get all twisted like that?

I know one thing. When they say smaller tanks have more unstable water parameters... they definitely aren't joking! This stuff is ALL OVER the charts and I can't even figure out how these numbers co-exist!

 

[Byron]

I think I can explain most of this...the phosphate is the one thing I cannot answer for, and my only suggestion here is to test the tap water in case the phosphate is from there (plants in other tanks, and fish, could use some of it).
 
So to the other things, starting with the GH.  Yes, lava rock is calcareous and will dissolve mineral to raise the GH.  This does not impact KH simultaneously.  So the GH rise is most likely the lava rock, and in such a small volume of water this will be more than it would in a much larger tank.  I must confess I would not expect it to be this much, if you are measuring in dGH...but if in ppm, no surprise at all.
 
The KH this low tends to lower naturally.  By the way, my tap water is also very soft, around 7 ppm GH and KH, or half of 1 dGH and KH.
 
The pH in any aquarium with organics will naturally lower because the breakdown of the organics produces carbonic acid.  The KH serves to buffer this, so with a higher KH it might not lower at all.  But with basically no KH, it will lower.  There is nothing really wrong with this, though you have to be careful with fish species.  I don't fuss over my pH, it is 7.0 in the tap water (they add soda ash to raise it, and this is temporary) and in some of my tanks it lowers to around 5 (or below, can't measure lower) and in others in the low to mid 6.  Many factors enter into this equation.
 
You are correct that in small tanks these type of natural fluctuations will be greater.  But aside perhaps from the phosphate rising, I see no problems here, things are behaving according to the laws of nature.

 
Byron.

 

[Ltygress]

Okay, for some reason I thought PH was also tied into GH. So that answers that. I knew about the PH becoming acidic unless something kept it up, I was just thinking GH kept it up, and not just KH. As for the lava rock, I figured that out as I continued testing the other 1-gallons. Everything with lava rock was really high in GH. So I answered my own question, but thanks for the reinforcement!

Phosphate I am still confused on. Since this lava rock was purchased from Home Depot's garden center, maybe it had something in it to help plants. I suppose. My 100-gallon is also off the chart, and it only has four small pieces of red lava rock in the entire tank. And the only reason I put those in there is for possible colonization of DEnitrifying bacteria to aid in keeping nitrates kinda low. But that tank is loving it, because I have it heavily planted for discus, and the plants are eating that phosphate up! Between that and the super-strong LEDs, they're all doubling in height in a matter of days!

 

[Byron]

The GH, KH and pH are inter-connected, but they can act independently if that makes sense.  Normally, raising GH will raise pH, since one uses calcium and magnesium primarily for this.  I do not know exactly what is in lava rock, only that it does raise the GH.  Given your situation, perhaps not the pH, or minimally.
 
You have checked phosphate in just the tap water? I would be concerned with phosphates rising.  Phosphates enter the tank via fish foods, and according to Diana Walstad, this is more than sufficient without adding any more.  High phosphate can increase algae.

 

[StevenF]

The GH is usually 3 and KH is usually 1 or 2. Yeah, it's THAT soft!
 

Do you have a RO system?  An RO system would explain why the water is this soft.  The only other source that would be that clean would be pure rain water.
 

My first 1-G is actually SO saturated with antibiotics, it just won't cycle. Bacteria just can't grow in there. It has registered high ammonia for 2 months with NO nitrites showing up. But it's fine, it's a hospital tank.
 

A Hospital tank with Ammonia?  No offence, but that isn't a hospital, its a Coffin.
 
keep in mind that all life needs trace elements.  if you don't have those trace element Bacteria algae will not grow.  It might not be antibiotics killing the Ammonia eating bacteria.  it might simply be that your water is missing something and that is killing the  bacteria.

 

 The newest one currently has a lot of ramshorn (pest) snails that I collected from other tanks. I put them all in there. If they can survive, great. If not, oh well. They're just going to become food for a friend's puffer fish.
However, I tested the water parameters on it today and found Ammonia high (no surprise), nitrite high (no surprise), nitrates high (no surprise), PH 6.6 (hmm, okay, came down from tap water somehow...), phosphate 5ppm (where in the world....), KH zero (yeah sometimes the KH disappears quickly in my inhabited tanks) and GH.... 25. TWENTY FIVE!

What in the heck could do that? The little acrylic tank? The SNAILS?? It was freshly set up when the snails went in. No substrate except two lava rocks used to hold zucchini down 
 

Phosphate is present in all food and all animal waist.  Phosphate can drop PH  and it will increase GH  I use RO water in my tank   If my plants are not doing will Phosphate will rise and GH wil increase.  However when the plants recover GH has fallen and KH has crashed.  I have been adding micro nutrients for some time so my results are not directly comparable since it doesn't sound like your are using fertilizer in your aquarium.  Rocks can also affect GH and KH  but in your case and in my own experience with aquarium safe gravel, I don't' think your rocks are a significant cause of the chemistry change you have seen.
 
I would strongly suggest you try adding  Seachem flourish to your hospital tank and you snail tank.  Given the small size of your tanks one drop per gallon would probably be all you need.  That would probably provide the trace elements bacteria would need and would probably finally allow your  tanks to cycle.

 

[Ltygress]

A Hospital tank with Ammonia?  No offence, but that isn't a hospital, its a Coffin.
 

After the fact, yes. It held a female betta for a little less than a week. Unfortunately, during that week she was treated with Tetracycline, which would have killed all the nitrifying bacteria anyway. So during that time, her poop, breathing, etc caused ammonia that wasn't eaten. It wasn't really high at all while she was in there (I kept an eye on it just in case, .25ppm was all it reached). But once she left.... that stuff started to climb, and never stopped! The test droplets turn green the moment one hits the water. And by the time it has sat for five minutes, it's such a dark BLUE you can't see through it. Yeah, blue's not a test color.... that's how far it went up after she was taken out, despite water changes!

And no, there are no phosphates in my tap water. But I have a feeling my city may use a very large R/O system, for the same reason you stated. It doesn't make too much sense to me, either. But that's what the test results showed (and my test chemicals are dated for March 2020, so I know they're still good).

 

[Byron]

There is nothing unusual in a low GH/KH for municipal water.  It depends where you are.  I would highly doubt that your city is treating the water with RO, this is very expensive and extremely wasteful, and there is no reason in the world why any city would do this, unless of course there is something extremely hazardous to human health (bacteria or arsenic or something) but this too is highly unlikely.
 
Those of us who live on the west coast of North America, in the Pacific Northwest of the US or in SW BC where I am, have very soft water because of its source.  The water reservoirs are up in the coastal mountains, and the water is very soft and very acidic naturally.  Souther California has much harder water.  There are also places elsewhere in NA with soft water...New York City comes to mind.  So there is nothing at all "unusual" in a near-zero GH/KH.
 
Byron.