Meganangeline
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2014
- Messages
- 22
I was wondering what is best to use to raise/lower ph level, lower nitrate, and lower ammonia. I would like to know what is best to use before I add some fish. thanks!
I was wondering what is best to use to raise/lower ph level, lower nitrate, and lower ammonia. I would like to know what is best to use before I add some fish. thanks!
I was wondering what is best to use to raise/lower ph level, lower nitrate, and lower ammonia. I would like to know what is best to use before I add some fish. thanks!
I was wondering what is best to use to raise/lower ph level, lower nitrate, and lower ammonia. I would like to know what is best to use before I add some fish. thanks!
The short answer is, it's best for your fish to not control water quality by adding stuff to the water.
There's this issue called osmotic stress, that you can't really measure, and it has to do with the amount of stuff in the water. Just as people don't do well with too much stuff in the air, fish don't do well with too much in the water or fast changes in how much stuff is in the water.
Like they said, ammonia gets reduced by having a colony of good bacteria to eat it. That makes nitrite, which another bacteria converts to nitrate.
So you want bacteria keeping ammonia and nitrite at zero, and you use water changes to keep the nitrate below 20. Water changes also keep PH stable.
The only time to add stuff is if your tapwater is extremely soft. Some minerals are necessary for the fish, and to balance pH. But if pH starts to move, it's because the pH buffering minerals all have stuff stuck to them so you take some out and out fresh in with a water change.
Hope the chemists in the room will forgive my rough explanation ...
PH can be like 6.5-7.5 according to our LFS, as long as it's stable. For fish stability is more critical than exact numbers.
You can grow your bacteria either by putting in a few fish and doing lots of water changes and water testing to keep the toxins down (fishin cycle) or by adding janitorial ammonia to an empty tank and testing often until ammonia and nitrite are zero, then you do a big water change and then add fish (fishless cycle). The bacteria need ammonia to grow, using bottled ammonia over a live source is often preferred. Dr Tims sells the right ammonia and some bottled bacteria, lots of fishless cycles go faster with baking soda and a high temp and high aeration.
This really is much less a pet than a hobby. Good luck!
I posted this over a month ago, I now have about 23 small fish in my aquarium(75G) and they're thriving, one of them even had babies
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