lkck
Aquarium Advice Newbie
My husband and I are new aquarists. We started a 15-gal. aquarium back in December (which currently houses some Tiger Barbs, Red-Eye Tetras and a little spotted catfish) and have a 10-gal. tank that houses one African Clawed Frog. In January, we purchased a used 90-gal. tank which has been up and running for two months now. We have a sand base in it, and it is well-filtered with two AquaClear 110 power filters. We do regular weekly 25% water changes and thus far, when we tested the water, it has been acceptable in all areas. This tank currently houses 2 Sunburst Plattys and 2 Black Mollies.....but we also had an adorable Black Ghost Knife who died 2 days ago from ???. The only thing we can think of that may have caused his death, is that we had been trying to lower the pH of the tank to 6.5-7.0 so that we could purchase some Discus. We were going to move the Plattys and Mollies into another tank and use the 90-gal. strictly for the BGK and Discus. From everything we've read, BGK's are tolerant of a lower pH (which the Discus apparently require) so we didn't anticipate a problem. In fact, after 3 days of treating the tank, we didn't even see much of a drop in the pH. Then we left the tank alone, and hadn't added the pH treatment for about 3 days, when our BGK started to act differently. He was hiding in his rock cave and didn't come out at all - even for food. Prior to that, he was out most of the time, even with the tank lights on! He enjoyed frozen Brine Shrimp and even ate some Flakes. We also purchased Ghost Shrimp for him, which I imagine he would eat at night (since we never actually saw him get one, but would find them dead and him picking on them during the day!). So perhaps that pH treatment weakened him? Or maybe he got something from the Ghost Shrimp? Or maybe he was ill from the start (although he seemed quite healthy and well for a good 2 weeks)? We just don't know. So, if anyone has any thoughts, we'd love to hear them. We sure do miss "Black Willie"..... ....and we'd love to purchase another, but are skeptical until we can figure out why BW died.