kH dropped like a rock and the pH followed

[xyyz]

i recently had my fish shipped from back east. don't ask how much it cost me. :/

the idiot i am, i didn't set the tank at least a week before the fish arrived. the tank's a 29 gallon breeder.

when i did set it, the pH was around 8.4, the kH was 120-180ppm with the gH over 300 - basically, hard alkaline water.

since the fish were used to a pH of 6-6.8 (silver angels, golden killies, and one opaline gourami) back in jersey, (yes i know the fluctuations are bad, but central jersey water has no buffering capacity) i had a **** of a time dropping the pH because of the buffering capacity.

i used some diluted sulphuric acid, but abandoned that idea because nothing happened with 4 teaspoonfulls. i decided to handle other matters and then come back to this one.

my next step was to worry about the hardness. i went out and bought some jiffy peat discs. i dropped 4 in the filter, a marineland pengiun biowheel 200g, and two in the tank.

i then figured i'd best do something about the pH again. as a result, i went out and bought a non-phosphate pH reducer, acid buffer by seachem. i put a bit less than half teaspoon of the substance into the filter.

i couldn't get the pH to drop below 7.2. when the fish arrived via UPS 4 1/2 hours late, with a prayer, after the temperature adjustment and the water mixing, i put them into the tank.

it's alarming to see what's happened since. my kH has practically disappeared. from 120-180ppm it's gone to zero. the pH can't stay stable. it keeps dropping. before bed i did a partial water change. this set the pH around 6.8. this morning it was 6 or lower. i added a half teaspoon of baking soda to get it almost to 6.4 and i'm testing every half hour to every hour to check what the pH is doing.

and on top of all of this, what i really want to drop, the gH is still sitting over 300ppm.

let me give a quick run down:

pH - 7.2 down to around or less than 6
ammonia - 0ppm
nitrite - was at 1ppm, after a partial water change it dropped to 0.5ppm
nitrate - 5ppm
gH - 300ppm
kH - ~0ppm

i'd really like to increase the kH to around 120ppm and lock the pH at 6.8 while keeping the gH down to 0-75ppm.

one thing i noticed. this seachem acid buffer says it lowers pH and converts kH into CO2, which explains the drop in kH, but i didn't put much in the tank, could that amount sap all the kH in such a short time?

 

[jsoong]

If you want a KH of 120, the pH would be 7.8 or so unless you inject CO2.

Your options:
Acclimatize your fish to the new pH / hardness of your tap water. This is prob the best unless you plan on breeding the fish, or for some reason the fish can't acclimatize.
Use R/O water and add a buffer with an equilibrium pH you want. <This would prob be some phosphate compound.>
Dilute your hard water with R/O. If you go 1/2 & 1/2 the KH would be 80 or so (still pretty decent for pH stability), and the pH would be 7.2 or so. <GH would be halved to 150.> You should be able to keep most fish in that.

 

[neilanh]

Welcome the AA!

All those additives you're using are just making the situation worse. The fish will acclimate to the new water conditions. Hopefully you did a good, long acclimation period to keep the stress down. Next time something like this occurs I highly recommend the drip method. All you need is a bucket (I use a tea pitcher) and a length of airline tubing.

Your tank's parameters are all out of whack right now. The additives you've used, on top of the fact that the tank is cycling, to be quite honest you really have no idea what you have, because all of these factors are playing off of one another.

I recommend you leave everything alone, pH, kH, gH, and don't worry about it right now. Monitor your Ammonia and NitrIte levels, and do a 50% water change anytime one of them reaches 0.5ppm.

Once your cycle completes, then worry about your other parameters. But, if you don't have a specific need to soften the water or lower the pH (i.e. for breeding purposes) then it is MUCH better to allow it to stabilize. The fish will be much healthier with a stable environment than one that is jumping all around as you attempt to control it.

I don't mean to sound harsh, and apologize if it came accross that way.

 

[xyyz]

thanks for the sound advice. it all makes perfect sense.

i'm a bit worried though. the fish made a trek from the east coast to the west coast. they weren't packed properly and the box wasn't heated.

i worry that the stress might cause illness. unfortunately, with fish illness, i have a zero success rate. :/

i've added the aquarium salt to counter the 1ppm nitrite levels. i also add a daily dose of API's Stress Coat. the fish are active and do eat, although they don't eat as much as they did when they were back east.

all this reading has me worried about the pH levels. will the fish be alright in water where the pH keeps dropping so much within a day? considering the tap water is extremely hard, is it going to alter the pH too much if i use that as replacement water? i was thinking of mixing it with some distiled water.

in retrospect, i agree that adding all that crap probably made things worse. the acid buffer, after reading seachem's descriptions is most probably responsible for depleting the kH.

is the consensus to forget about the baking soda, the seachem acid buffer, and the crushed coral, and let things sort themselves out?

how long should i wait?

as for the water changes to lower the nitrite levels, what water should i use? RO/distiled? tap? a mix? if i mix em, what sorta ratio should i use?

one more question that's somewhat related. i see this term "let it cycle." what exactly do you mean when you talk about having the biological filter cycle? what's the cycle? does it mean to allow the biological filtration to become fully active? typically how long does this take? two weeks?

 

[whiddett]

By let it cycle they do mean let the bio filter become fully active. From a brand new set up with new sponges I believe this takes about 4-6 weeks for the water to become stable. Are you using API Stress Zyme to kick start the process? Something like that should help.

 

[xyyz]

you got it. i'm using API's Stress Zyme. in addition, i took a small scraping from the filter medium of an established aquarium and mixed it in with the water of this aquarium.

maybe it's just my paranoid state right now, considering what's going on with this setup, but i could swear that after the addition of the scraping, the fish seem to be breathing a bit heavier.

 

[whiddett]

OK. I use stress zyme too and my LFS said its definately 4-6 weeks for the tank to cycle. Maybe it would be a good idea to start doing regular small water changes like 10% each day to slowly dilute all the additives that you have put in and to slowly bring the PH to that of your tap water. I have been told that most fish will be happy in PH 8-8.4 water and the most important thing is that the PH is stable (unless its something a bit more special like Discus which need PH 6.5-7. For the long it would be easier to keep the PH at the level of your tap/replacement water.
Another benefit of these small water changes is that it would help keep your Nitrites under control. If you are in the early stages of your cycle and have just put all your fish in the tank I would expect you will be heading for a major Nitrite spike which would not be good! Someone else here may give better advice as I am just a relative Newbie but I think that what I have said makes sense and keeps things simple.

 

[whiddett]

By the way, I live in an area with hard, high PH water and am on day 12 with my new tank setup which is why I can understand your concerns. I have been using PH minus for a year but following reading stuff on here and speaking to one of my LFS's who keep their entire stock in the same kind of tap water as I have, I have decided I will stop trying to control the PH and just use dechlorinated tap water in future. I reckon controlling Nitrates and Nitrites is the key to happy fish.

 

[Purrbox]

I would agree that doing water changes to stabilize the KH/pH while slowly allowing your fish to become used to the higher levels and to keep the Ammonia and Nitrite under control is probably your best bet. Unless you plan to try to control the KH/pH levels through mixing with RO water, I'd go ahead and use straight tap water for the water changes.

 

[neilanh]

There's a link in my sig called the Nitrogen Cycle. Read that article, it will help you understand what's going on in your tank.

I agree with Purr, use straight tap water from here on out, at least until your cycle completes. It doesn't sound like you have any need to control your kH/pH, so it's better to just let it be stable. Do water changes anytime your ammonia or nitrite get to 0.5ppm. Use a good dechlorinator (I prefer prime) and don't use any other additives in your tank.

 

[xyyz]

i'm much obliged for all the help. i've definitely learned what NOT to do when setting up an aquarium. this information is going to be VERY handy when i set up the 55 gallon community and 20 gallon african cichild tanks later.

the tap water has a pH of 8.4 the current aquarium water always drops to a pH <=6 (the API test kit doesn't have a color scheme below a pH of 6.)
since the consensus is to use tap water and there's a pretty noticeable delta between the pH of both (>= 1.4), my concern is the pH fluctuation and the effects on the fish. when i do the partial water change the pH comes up to 6.4-6.6. will this bi-daily fluctuation cause harm to the fish?

i'm doing small bi-daily changes of about 1-2 gallons at a time. that keeps the nitrites at or below .5ppm. so far the ammonia hovers between 0-.25ppm.

i'm now off to read neilanh's linked article.

again, thanks for the responses!

 

[Purrbox]

It's actually the swings in KH that harm fish, not the swings in pH. The chemicals that you added completely knocked out your KH which is the pH buffer. Without a buffer the pH can swing widely as you've seen. You might want to consider doing a slightly larger water change to try to get as much of the pH adjusting chemicals out of the aquarium as possibly and get that valuable stabilizing KH back in. Once you remove enough of the chemicals that are removing the KH and can get it back up sufficiently high, your pH will stabilize and start to move up with each water change until it matches your tap water.

Another option would be to move the fish to buckets, drain your aquarium and refill with just dechlorinated water. Then you could do a nice slow drip acclimation to adjust your fish to the new water.

 

[xyyz]

at this point i understand chemicals are bad, but how about tetra's easybalance to help with the kH?

having asked that, it's time for another water change.

 

[neilanh]

I'd really advise against adding any other additives to your tank right now. Larger water changes are a good idea to get things to stabilize.

 

[xyyz]

10% water changes every 1-2 hours is what i'll do right now.

according to purrbox, the kH swings harm the fish, if the tap water has a kH around 120-180ppm and i start the massive water changes, won't this harm the fish considering the kH is around 0 right now?

what's the best way to do the large volume water change? should i do it gradually like i'm doing? or should i dump out 50% at once?

what sorta' change can the fish endure in what time period? i think with pH they say no more than one full point in 24 hours. so what ppm change can the fish cope with within what given period?

with the last water change, the nitrite is stable at .5ppm and the pH has gone up to somwehre between 6.4-6.6.

btw. why do they say that pH fluctuation is the harmful factor, and not mention kH?

 

[Purrbox]

Most people have a test kit for pH and not KH, so that is what they see changing. In most cases the two will change together so it doesn't matter to differentiate.

When injecting CO2 for plants, you change just the pH and not the KH. There is usually a daily swing in the pH depending on the method of CO2 injection, and this does absolutely no harm to the fish. This issue causes a lot of confusion for people getting started with live plants.

 

[whiddett]

I agree that more chemicals are most likely not the answer and I'd avoid that solution. Who knows how more chemicals would interact with what you have all ready put in. From what Purrbox says, if you continue with small frequent water changes until your PH becomes stable between water changes then you will have got a KH reading back into the water and you can reduce the frequency of water changes to a level which will just control the Nitrite levels during your cycle. Then the water will be relatively stable and the PH will gradually creep up to that of your tap water at a slowish rate for your long term solution.
I dont think anyone can tell you how much water quality fluctuation your fish can take. I would imagine it varies from both fish to fish and species to species. I think you are in a pretty tough situation and will just have to go with the small water changes until you achieve what you need to achieve and hope that the fish come through it OK. But 10% every 1-2 hours sounds alot. I would slow that down as much as you dare unless you still really feel the PH is changing alot over that short a time.
Your only other options that I can think of are a big water change or to rehome the fish to a stable cycled tank until your current tank is cycled and stable. However, both of these are going to cause a step change in water quality for your fish and I feel would cause more stress than the small water changes. Unless of course you can do some kind of drip acclimatisation as suggested by Purrbox. But how you would go about this and what you would need I have no idea.

 

[xyyz]

alright. i'm hitting the brakes on the constant water changes. i figure 5-10% twice a day.

the pH does crash to <= 6.0 overnight. that's my worry at the moment. also considering the amount of water changes, i figure something should happen by now.

i wonder if this seachem acid buffer is sitting in the gravel bed causing this drop, because the diluted sulphuric acid didn't seem to do much. or maybe it's a combination of both?

what's the consensus on treating the fish with small amounts of pimaflix and melaflix until the tank is normal? i don't want then to get any opportunistic infections if they're stressed.

 

[Purrbox]

I'd say it sounds like your waterchanges are too small to remove enough of the chemicals to allow your KH/pH to stabilize. Larger water changes or starting from scratch with new water are going to be your best options.

 

[whiddett]

Hmm yeah. If you cant get things stable it sounds like drastic action may be needed. Maybe its gonna be best to get the fish out, empty the tank of water and start again. Hopefully you wont be starting the cycle from scratch as any bacteria in your filter ought to survive if you dechlorinate the water. This will mean the fish undergo a step change in conditions but at least that would mean a prolonged stable environment rather than these prolonged fluctuations you seem to be having. I dont know about using meds as a pre-emptive strike but a good dose of stress coat in the new water wont hurt Im sure. Let us know what you decide and how it goes.