Water problems

[lafs309]

Hello,

I bought my first fish tank back in August. Sadly to say I didn't do enough research and I put a bunch of fish in all at once pretty much, and then the problems started. Four out of six of my fish died, and I felt horrible, I kept buying products from the stores, but nothing helped. Finally I went on-line and did research. Anyway I didn't cycle my tank, and this caused my fish to die of disease, and ammonia poisoning. It has been over a month now and my two platys have survived. I have been following the advice I have read and have bought an api testing kit. After 4 weeks or so my ammonia is down to 1.0 (from like 5) my nitrites are at 0 and my nitrates are at 20. The big problems is the ammonia doesn't seem to go down anymore and my pH keeps increasing. It was high to start about 8.0 but now it is up to like 8.8 (top of the chart). The fish seem to be fine, but I am getting what I beleive to be brown algae and want to add more fish. Any advice?

 

[mfdrookie516]

Welcome to AA

I would double check your test kit against some distilled or ro/di water. All levels should read 0, except pH which should be close to 7. I've never ever heard of tap water that high, unless you have something in the tank buffering it. How often are you doing water changes, and how much at a time? If ammonia is indeed 1ppm, do 50% pwc's until you can keep it below .5ppm... even if you have to do it twice a day. Do not add any fish until you have 0ppm ammonia and nitrite. Once both hold 0 for a couple weeks, you should be ok to add fish, assuming you have the room. What size tank do you have?

 

[lafs309]

Water trouble

Thanks for the quick reply,

I have been doing 25% water changes about twice a week. I did more when I first had the trouble like 50% daily, but it didn't seem to help that much, and since then my water has really stabilized, but the ammonia is still high ( although it was at 5 before). It is a ten gallon tank and I have had it since about mid August. There are the two platys. I did test the tap water too, because this seemed odd, but the readings are fine for the tap. The ammonia is zero and the pH is about 7.4 for the tap water.

 

[Bigzmey]

Water trouble

Do you have any rocks or shells in the tank? They may raise pH with time. Also, what kind of substrate do you have?