Whats Going On...!?!?!?!?

[keeton]

if its still that same with his test kit, is it possible that its an ammonia spike for some weird reason and that it will be eaten so to speak in an amount of time considering that i have 0 nitrite and nitrates between 10-20?

 

[saz326]

Theres not a lot to do unless a cause is known. All you could do is to give a good clean and maintain regular waterchanges until the mini cycle completes itself. Feed less just so the filter doesnt have to struggle.

 

[Essjay]

Re expiry date of API test kit - this is reply from them when I asked that question:


" each reagent bottle has a Lot # printed on the bottle. The last four digits are the month and year of manufacture. Example: Lot # 28A0108. This is a pH reagent manufactured in January of 2008. Wide Range pH, High Range pH, Ammonia, Nitrate, Phosphate, Copper, Calcium and GH all last for three years. Nitrite and KH will last for four years. Freshwater pH (low range) and Pond Care Salt Level will last for five years"

 

[OldMan47]

Is it possible that the small sample of sponge that you stole is letting most of the water in the filter just bypass the sponge now? That would mean the sponge is basically gone as far as the ammonia processing is concerned. If you add that to the loss of biomedia that happened when you replaced the gravel with sand, you may have affected the ability to process ammonia enough to actually see some ammonia. At a low pH the sand will not be growing its own bacteria very well and the old filter will not be growing its colony larger very quickly either. You are in a fish-in cycle and need to ease the pH up enough to let the bacterial colonies grow in the old filter, the sand and in the new filter.

 

[keeton]

hi guys, i kept up with the water changes for a fish in cycle and the ammonia is now staying at 0 as of yesterday AM (9am friday) will keep testing. today i went to my lfs to get another gbr, the lfs tested my water sample (with a dip stick) and said my fish should be dead and my sand should be black because my ph was showing 5.4 on there dipstick and 0 KH (carbonated hardness?) which makes it PH4 according to them. he then walked off and came back with 2 fist size balls of "tooth rock" and about 5 handful of crushed shell (i dont know what shell it is, maybe cockle shell) and said to put the shell under my sand and break the rock up and put it all around the rock. my api test kit still says 6 - 6.4, but 6 is the lowest it goes to so could it be lower?
just as i was leaving he said to me, that you should never use co2 on a tank as no fish ever live and it stops the plants from growing. then asked about the co2 circulation, to which i said that it was getting all around the tank from my tetratex ex600 outlet. he made me laugh next by saying "the co2 doesn't want to be circulated, you need to turn the pump off when the co2 is running"

 

[OldMan47]

Well we all have our own methods but the ones the LFS are suggesting sound very different to what I would do. The crushed shell will do more good in the filter than it will under the substrate. You want water flowing across it to get any of the calcium carbonate to dissolve and raise the KH and pH. It may be that the gravel you removed was not inert but was slowly dissolving in the tank water which would explain why it dropped after you switched substrate. Shutting off the filter for hours at a time while introducing CO2 would explain why he thinks that CO2 kills fish. Shutting off the filter for hours on end daily will definitely ruin the water quality in a tank over time.

 

[keeton]

how would you raise the KH and PH? i wouldn't of thought the gravel would of been dissolving, wouldn't you notice a difference in amount over 5 years? shuting the filters off would slowly kill the bacteria colonys and allow the ammonia to build up, probably the cause of fish deaths.
the thing that concerns me is that they are testing there own and customers water frequently with dip stick (know for being hugely inaccurate) to test water then adjustly the tank accordingly. also that if my ph is between "4" and "5" then my fish would of died along time ago or have new infections/diseases every other week.

 

[keeton]

anyone else have any idea's?

 

[coldcazzie]

also that if my ph is between "4" and "5" then my fish would of died along time ago or have new infections/diseases every other week.

not necessarily - mine was about that low a few weeks back but it must have dropped really slowly because my fish were fine with it, and have been fine since I raised it again by doing 25% daily water changes for about 2 weeks (tap is 7.4). It must have been that low because it took me 5 days to get the test to read anything other than 6, but after it got within the range of the test it went up quite quick.

However, I sympathise about the weird pH reading - I have both API and Nutrafin test kits, the API one says my tap water is 7.4, the nutrafin one says 6.5! It's quite a difference...

PS sorry that doesnt answer your Q!! lol

 

[keeton]

hmmmm, might have to try that for a week or so and see if it brings it up.

Update:
the guy at the lfs said to add the rock and shell as it will very very slowly bring out the ph and keep it steady, so i did a test i added 1/100th the amount of water in my tank to a glass and added 1/100th the amount of rock i was given to the water, same for the shell but obviously with the shell. after 10 minutes the PH in the water with the rock had not changed and the water with the shell had not changed. after 1 hour the water with the rock had gone to ph6.4 and the water with the shell had raised to ph6.2.
2 hours later i checked again and the rock had gone to ph7.2 and the shell ph6.6.

will be checking the ph again in an hour and then in the morning.
I took a cup of water out my tank when i took the water out to test with the rock and shell, and just checked it. after four hours the ph is still 6, i could after a couple of water the ph would raise as the co2 left the water?

cheers

 

[OldMan47]

Your extreme low pH with at least 2 big recent water changes seems to indicate that you do not have much buffering in your water. That is where the crushed shell comes into play. The shell will buffer the water by increasing the KH and will also push the pH up some. The buffer will also make the effect of the CO2 much less than otherwise. The hard part about using it is that it slowly dissolves constantly and will take your pH too high if the amount that is dissolving is not balanced by water changes. That means you need a very regular water change schedule and then adjust the amount of shell to get the desired pH in the tank. It sounds complicated but once you get things where you want them you just change the same amount of water each week and the pH stays in a nice narrow range. If the rock is driving the pH more than the shell, I would hold of on using it unless you find the shell just can't control the pH.
As far as the old substrate coming up missing after 5 years, we are only talkin in terms of parts per million and there is a lot of mass in an aquarium substrate. If the whole tank substrate volume went down by 1/10 inch, I doubt you would have noticed it.

 

[keeton]

i've just bought a kh test and tested myself which has shown 2/3kh. am i right in thinking that the shell will have calcium in it to bring the kh up which will bring the ph up also. but doesn't need to be done extremely slowly, ph fluctuation via co2 is ok but ph fluctuation due to kh is really bad. should i put a small amount of shell in my filter and monitor the ph and kh every hour? and add and remove shell accordingly till i get a solid kh between 5-10?

 

[OldMan47]

The shell will have calcium which will bring up GH and carbonate which will bring up KH. Shell and the rocks that you were given both are made of calcium carbonate.