Where should I go from here?

[azuroo]

The other night my 29 gallon aquarium randomly cracked, flooded my kitchen and living room, and I lost five of the ten fish. (By lost, I mean I never found them! I think one of my cats might have found them first. )

So, I went out and got a new tank. It's a 30 gallon hexagon shaped aquarium. In it I put a gallon of the old tank water I was able to save, along with the three live plants, three large slimy rocks, a piece of driftwood with things growing on it, tiny snails, and all of the bottom pebbles salvaged from my broken tank. I added the small amount of refrigerated live bacteria I had left, though it was open for more than nine months. I also added three gallons of cycled water from my clawed frog tank. I topped off the tank with tap water. (I know RO water is better, but I couldn't afford to buy THAT much of it at once, especially after buying the new aquarium.)

I tested the GH and the KH. The GH was 120. The KH for some reason is only 40 mg/L. The guy at my LFS said it should be around 80. What can I do to raise it slightly? I googled a bit, and I read you can add baking soda. Is this correct? Just 1/4th of a teaspoon?

I don't have a pH test kit. And just as an extra bit of information, the temperature in the tank is heated between 75 and 80 degrees.

I have the five fish I saved in a bowl in some of their original cycled water, and I really need to add them to the new tank, but I don't want to kill them if the water is going to cycle more. I really don't know what to do...should I wait? Should I add them and get some more live bacteria from the LFS to add periodically? (My LFS won't be open again until Tuesday.)

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

[neilanh]

Welcome to the site!

Sorry for the cracked tank. Unfortunately it does happen, albeit very rare.

Go ahead and put the fish in the tank. You'll want to acclimate them for temperature to make sure it matches, but they should be fine. You shouldn't need to do a pH/kH acclimation since your source water hasn't changed.

The bacteria that lives on your gravel and in your filter, etc, are probably fine, assuming they didn't dry out. If they did, then you're going to have to cycle your tank again. Read the article in my sig about the nitrogen cycle.

For future reference, saving the water isn't necessary (I'm assuming this is a FW tank. SW is a different story) so don't worry about that. The cycle is the bacteria colony, and they live on surfaces in the tank, not in the water column. If you ever encounter anything like this again, the most important thing after rescuing your fish into water is to save tank water to keep your filter media wet, as that's where most of the bacteria live. Saving that can keep you from having to cycle the whole tank again.

If all of your media and substrate did dry out, your bacteria are most likely dead, in which case you'll want to get seed material (i.e. a used filter cartridge) or bio-spira to speed up the cycling process. You'll need a good test kit for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to monitor the cycle. If the media stayed wet, you should be good to go, although you might see a mini-cycle, it shouldn't be too bad.

For FW, tap water is absolutely fine, as long as you use a good dechlorinator, I recommend Prime. RO water isn't necessary at all.

Also, don't try to control your pH or kH. The fish will much prefer a stable environment than a targeted one. They will adapt to your 40 (they actually already have), and they're fine there. Trying to control it you'll get kH swings as you do water changes, etc, and not be able to keep it steady, and that's not good on your fish.

So, for my disclaimer, I'll say that if this is a SW tank, disregard nearly everything I said, as SW is a different story altogether.

 

[azuroo]

Thanks for the quick response! It's a fresh water tank, I should have clarified that.

The filter was dried out, but the rocks were still under an inch of water in the bottom of the cracked tank, and the big log was totally submerged in a bucket. I do have a very dirty filter from the clawed frog tank that I could stick in there...

I didn't know you could just leave the KH alone...if that's the case, then why did the LFS tell me it was so important to test it!?! I had such a hard time getting my first aquarium up and running, maybe altering the KH over and over was part of that problem.

 

[neilanh]

That's good the substrate remained wet, as that will definately help you out. I dont know how much the dirty filter from the frog tank will help, but that might be a good idea too. I don't know anything about frogs, so I don't know that they carry a high enough bioload to really force the establishment of a large bacteria colony.

The test kit is going to be the most important thing for you the next week or two. The API master test kit is a great one if you don't have it.

I don't want to knock your LFS, but in general most LFSs don't really carry a lot of real knowledge. What you get mostly are salespeople who's job is to sell you products. This is especially true in the larger chain stores. Not necessarily the case here for you, but I highly recommended researching and double checking any advice you get from an LFS first, until you determine if they really know what they're saying or not.

ALtering the kH can be very, very bad for your fish. A stable environment is the most important thing for them.

 

[azuroo]

The store is run by a fish biologist, so he knows lots of scientific stuff. Every time I ask a question there I end up rather confused! I will look for that test kit.

 

[jsoong]

Although it is a good rule to not doctor the water, there is an exception: If your KH is low, it is better to increase it to maintain pH stability.

I agree with your lfs person. KH of 40 (about 2.5 degrees) is about at the lower limit of where a tank should be, so it is Ok to bump that up a bit.

There is no need for R/O water in your case. R/O has no KH, adding that would decrease your KH even more & lead to more pH swings. You can:
1. Use your tap as is (dechlorinated, of course), and do frequent water changes to replenish the KH as it is used up. This is the most fool proof method, although you would need to monitor the water to see how fast the HCO3 is being used up so you can replenish accordingly. <OTOH, you would be doing lots of monitoring & pwc's in the next while to make sure you don't get into a cycling situation.>
2. Increase the KH with a bit of bicarbonate. If you go down this route, it is imperative that you be consistent in your dosing with each water change <ie always add the same amount for a specific volume of water changed out.> or there will be pH swings.
3. Add crushed coral or limestone to your tank. This will maintain a stable pH, even with small pwc using a variable water source. Disadvantage is that the pH may be very far from your source (cc will drive the pH towards 7.8 & keep it there), and if you need to do an emergency large water change, you have to accurately match the water with HCO3. Also, you will need to acclimitize all your fish (& new additions) to this new pH carefully to prevent problems.