Everlasting
Aquarium Advice Regular
I have a 29 gallon tank that's filter with a Marineland Penguin Bio-Wheel 200b system. I've got the temperature set to 75 degrees, I use tahitian moon sand as substrate and have silk plants and driftwood in the tank. I keep community fish in it.
My tap water is always very alkaline and this has never seemed to both the community fish in the tank, or my betta's in their 3 separate tanks. I generally do not bother checking my pH levels every week because I've never once in 3 years had it show anything other than bright blue. My red female swordtail died yesterday, so I immediatly because checking my levels and nitrite, nitrate and ammonia were all fine. When I saw all those were fine I checked the pH and it was very acidic. I did a partial water change and checked the pH of the tap water which was again very alkaline. The water change brought the pH to about mid level on the scale.
My question is, what is causing the pH to suddenly become acidic? Am I perhaps overfeeding them? Would that affect it? Or anything to do with the substrate ? I stir it weekly and it's (unfortunatly) FULL of malaysian trumpet snails...
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
My tap water is always very alkaline and this has never seemed to both the community fish in the tank, or my betta's in their 3 separate tanks. I generally do not bother checking my pH levels every week because I've never once in 3 years had it show anything other than bright blue. My red female swordtail died yesterday, so I immediatly because checking my levels and nitrite, nitrate and ammonia were all fine. When I saw all those were fine I checked the pH and it was very acidic. I did a partial water change and checked the pH of the tap water which was again very alkaline. The water change brought the pH to about mid level on the scale.
My question is, what is causing the pH to suddenly become acidic? Am I perhaps overfeeding them? Would that affect it? Or anything to do with the substrate ? I stir it weekly and it's (unfortunatly) FULL of malaysian trumpet snails...
Any help would be greatly appreciated!