Quote:
Originally Posted by lauraleellbp
x3 on you're better off not trying to adjust/add chemicals to change your pH. Did you go for a while w/out doing PWC on this tank? That's the prime culprit for a tank's parameters to get too far off from tap parameters. IMO you should keep up the PWC at least weekly.
Also, get yourself a master FW test kit- they're only $20-25 and could end up saving you a lot of $ in the long run- Rosalines aren't cheap fish!
"Almost 0" doesn't sound "good" to me- in a healthy tank ammonia and nitrItes should ALWAYS be zero, no more! Sounds to me like your fish store may have been more interested in selling you fish than telling you the truth...
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sorry i meant that my ammonia and nitrites were 0 and the nitrates were at a very low number.
as far as my ph and chemicals are concerned i'm thinking i woudl need to add chemicals because i never added chemicals before and the ph for my tank was a whooping 7.5 i have 2 big pieces of driftwood and lots of organic dirt (with lots of small bits of wood in there) which should lower the pH but my tank was still extremly high. the only explanation would be that my tap water pH was too high which would explain why the deaths and health problems always came AFTER a water change. i thought it was stress etc but even small water changes (10% or so) would end up making my rummy nose swim wildly.
Oh yea and i've been pretty diligent about water changes. the tank itself has been set up for a while with large rainbows and other hardy fish but in the last 3 months or so i turned it into a plant tank. the gravel and dirt remain the same and the filter remain the same. only the inhabitants and aquascape has changed. normally i would do a 20% water change every week. and every week i would see my fish acting kinda weird. at first i thought stress, then i thought that maybe my bioload was too high and when i did a water change the chemicals changed too much. i got the lfs to check my water parameters (i trust this guy he's a good buddy now and doesn't really pressure me to buy any fish) and of course everything came out fine. Afterwards i checked the pH and that was when i realized it was too high being at 7.5 (the card couldn't check any higher).
I think i'm going to have keep on adding chemicals to adjust the pH for the time being and i'm going to invest in a pH tester as well. the reason being is because since adding the powder to lower my pH i've done 2 water changes (one was 15% and the other 80%...i had to move the tank for construction which is why i had to do the 80%) and the fish aren't acting weird or anything right now. in fat they're all doing fine even after the 80% water change which is pretty amazing to me because before i would always lose 1 or 2 fish fish after a water change that was larger then 25%.
Thanks for the advice on the no chemical thing but i gotta go with my gut on this one and gotta keep using the Kent pH thing to get it to around 6ish. i'll be adding the roseline back into the community tank again by tonight after all the construction is done and i move my tanks back into their orginal spots.