begginersluck
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Surprise surprise. A Newbie at Salwater setups, gone for a nano aqaurium and having problems. Firstly the reason i didnt go bigger was due to space. i have a much larger tropical tank but i wanted to get started on something. So i bought a 55L aquarium, built in filter, put some live rock in it, crushed corals for the base, cycled it for 6 weeks with 2 black mollies then started to buy fish. I bought 2 Percula Clowns, 1 Strawberry Basslet, 1 Yellow Cap Damsel and another i forget the name of. They seemed to be doing great for a couple of weeks and suddenly...... DEAD! The whole lot died within a week. Forgot to mention i have a Coral Banded Shrimp and a small cleanup crew that are still doing ok! I have tested the water and Nitrates Nitrites & Ammonia are ok. Salinity WAS fairly high at 36 so i adjusted that which now reads 32 on my hydrometer. PH is 7.8. I think the problem with loosing the last 3 fish was due to the change of salinity which i may have done too quickly. I removed some of the water and replaced it straight away with RO water to reduce the Salinity level. Now i understand this must be done much much slower. The LFS is telling me the PH is too low at only 7.8 and needs to read around 8.3. so i bought some 8.3 buffer, i've used it 4 times now for the last 4 days and it isnt making a slight difference in the PH reading.
Apologies for the long text but i am a little clueless as to what to do about it, sceptical about adding new fish and certainly understand i need to brush up a little on my Saltwater knowledge.
Apologies for the long text but i am a little clueless as to what to do about it, sceptical about adding new fish and certainly understand i need to brush up a little on my Saltwater knowledge.