[bevsies]

This morning while feeding the fish and checking the water parameters I found that my ammonia had gone up to 1.0ppm and the pH has gone down to at least 6.0ppm.

This is a new 29-gallon tank that I set up 2 weeks ago. It was doing fine for the first week, I was doing partial 10% water changes every day or two, and the parameters were:

Week 1
pH: 6.8
Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate: 0ppm

Week 2
ph: 6.8/7.0
Ammonia: 0.25, then rising to 0.5 and finally today 1.0ppm
Nitrites and nitrates still 0
KH: 1dKH
GH: 2-3 dGH

My tank also has very low aeration so I think I'll start running my two HOB filters on high flow but make a PVC pipe water sprinkler to distribute the increased output evenly and better aerate the water.

Yesterday, when the ammonia double to 0.5ppm, I did a 20% water change but the ammonia still rose up to 1ppm today. I've been dosing Prime and API AmmoLock interchangeably for the past five days or so. Did the low kH cause the pH swing when ammonia started to spike?

What should I do now? I found a post somewhere online that advised doing 10% water changes every 15 to 20 minutes until the pH and kH of the aquarium water matched the pH and kH of the water coming out of the tap. And then add sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to stabilize the water? Should I continue regularly adding baking soda to raise my kH? Will that also raise my pH?

Gahhhhhhhhh! Worse Friday the 13th ever!

 

[Hallyx]

You have very soft, low mineral-content water. This keeps the pH low and makes it unstable due to weak chemical buffering that minerals provide. Raising the pH by using bicarbonate to raise the KH is a temporary and unstable correction -- not recommended.

You can safely, slowly and permanently raise the GH by installing crushed coral, seashells or cuttlebone in or near the filter.

A 10% pwc every day or so eventually allows carbonic acid to build up, which lowers the pH. A larger, less-frequent pwc is more effective, if the sourcewater pH is anywhere near the tank pH

 

[bevsies]

Thanks!

I'll do larger, less frequent water changes.

I just called my LFS and they only sell crushed coral in large bags, and he suggested using calcerous rocks. Would that also continually buffer the water or would it also be only temporary and sudden?

 

[Hallyx]

That would work fine. Sorry I forgot to mention it.

They will harden (mineralize) the water slowly.

 

[bevsies]

So does GH stabilize water in the same way that KH does? I thougght GH was irrelevant in this situation.... I clearly am thoroughly uneducated on the subject.

 

[charliegill110]

Thanks!

I'll do larger, less frequent water changes.

I just called my LFS and they only sell crushed coral in large bags, and he suggested using calcerous rocks. Would that also continually buffer the water or would it also be only temporary and sudden?

Just get cuttlebone from a pet store. It's in the bird section and is super cheap

 

[bevsies]

Just get cuttlebone from a pet store. It's in the bird section and is super cheap

Thank you! I will go out and get that tomorrow!

So what I've done so far is a 60% water change and added 1 tsp of baking soda to temporarily stabilize the tank until I could go get some calcarous (?) filter media to help with KH and GH. My pH is 6.8 and I have a KH of 3 right now... hopefully it's stable until morning :s

 

[bevsies]

Update: The pH fell back to 6.6 overnight from 7.0 despite a KH of 3 (clearly not enough). The water is also extremely cloudy and there's this gross translucent film over everything. It's only sticking to this that were still submerged during the water change.

Can bacterial blooms cause pH crashes, or be a symptom of them?

I pulled the fish out immediately, and one of my bettas' sides turned white. It looks like the gunk that's clinging to the tank is also clinging to him? I didn't get a chance to take a picture of him and both fish are now in buckets. They've been moved twice in the past 12 hours after basically sitting in acid and breathing in germs so I really don't want to stress him out by pulling him back out of the water to take a picture.

 

[Hallyx]

There is a hard-to-explain relationship between GH, KH and pH. GH is hard minerals, mostly calcium and magnesium, which is permanent and defines the baseline hardness -- it indirectly effects the pH. KH or carbonate hardness is fairly east to manipulate and relates directly to the pH, which is the relationship between carbonate and bicarbonate.

Under some circumstances (above my knowledge to explain) carbonates can precipitate out of the water producing a cloudiness similar in appearance to a bacteria bloom. That's what your pictures look like to me, especially if the film sticks to the fish -- bacteria doesn't do that.

Kmuda, at Oscarfish.Com - The Oscar Fish Community has a good explanation of that aspect of water chemistry.

Byron has a nice short article on it: http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/...water-hardness-ph-freshwater-aquarium-188705/
But I think you are already up to this level of understanding.

By the way, a 6.6 to 7.0pH is excellent, if you can get it to stay there consistently.

Would you be averse to doing a complete cleaning of the tanks and starting fresh?

 

[bevsies]

I couldn't find the article by Kmuda talking about carbonate precipitation. The only information I could find was about mineral deposits in saltwater tanks, but I also found that precipitation is when elements react together inside a solution to form a solid. So... I somehow got some things in the water that may have reacted together to create cloudy water? I didn't do very well in high school chemistry.

However, the reason I think it may be a bacterial bloom is because I had a lot more organic waste sitting in my tank than I thought. I need to do much deeper weekly cleanings. I also have that ongoing nasty ammonia spike, the highest I've ever seen. In less than 48 hours it went from somewhere between 0 and 0.25 to 1ppm.

I put in some coral rock today, which I smashed up with a hammer and placed in the filter. The pH is pretty high, over 7.2 I think and the KH is 5, the GH is 2. I also added another 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, so there is a total of 1.5 tsp in the tank now. If I do end up having to start fresh, do I need to rinse my substrate and rinse off all the plants, everything in the filters, etc?

If I need to start over, I will. When I take the water out of the tank and let it sit, the pH doesn't drop so whatever is messing the pH/KH is lurking in the tank.

 

[bevsies]

This morning parameters are:
pH: 7.6 (probably thanks to a combination of baking soda and coral, and I'm done adding baking soda so hopefully the pH will drop to at least 7.0)
Ammonia: 1ppm, maybe 2ppm
KH: 5 dKH (Thank God it stayed the same overnight)
GH: 2

Good news everyone! The cloudiness has pretty much cleared up. There are no new gross deposits. I'm going to do another 50-60% water change today and see what happens.

 

[bevsies]

I also just noticed a copepod... hooray! Hopefully that's a sign that things are finally on the right track to recovery?

 

[Hallyx]

A deep cleaning to get rid of the decomposing organics that might be causing the bacteria bloom. You got that. Good call.

The bicarb will eventually go away with regular water changes and just recombining with calcium, etc. No need to do anything special.

Now that the pH is >7.0, more of the ammonia will be present as dangerous "free" ammonia (NH3). Adding Prime @2-drops/gal daily will render it harmless to livestock, should you choose to put them back in there.

I would. A larger tank is almost always better for the fish.

With the higher pH (and I'm confident it will be more stable with that coral in there), the nitrogen cycle will be easier to establish, and it will be more stable.

 

[bevsies]

Thanks for the replies, Hallyx I don't feel so alone in this, lol.

Since the tank now had to re-cycle (yippee...) I'll be adding Prime daily anyway. After the bext big water change I'll hopelly remove most of the baking soda and the pH will be free to do as it wishes.


Hopefully I'll put the fishies back in this afternoon