I have a tough question and so I'm going to give all the background info and see if you guys can help me at all.
My city has very hard water, I think at least a PH of 8. I have a semi planted tank, it is a 20 gallon with 2 good sized swords, a lot of anacharis, a marimo ball, some green and white acorus, mondo grass and new bacopa and banana plant. Anyway, in the tank I had an opaline gourami, 4 corys, 2 otocinclus, a few platies and a bumblebee cat. I almost never change my water, but I top it off very regularly so I don't hear the water falling. I know that's not ideal, but I'm trying to give background info. So 2 times now when I did a larger water change, all of my fish got very sick and 1/2 or more died. The first time was a couple months ago, about a 40% water change, and the second time was a few days ago, I hadn't been topping it off and I added about 4 gallons. And then my new dwarf cichlid, 3 platies, 2 otos, a bumblebee cat, and a cory died.
What would cause this? My only thoughts are that either my water conditioner is crappy, or that the plants have softened the water so much that adding my city's hard water shocked the fish. These are all hardy fish though, that recently made it through an ich breakout and tolerate my complete lack of water changes.
Any thoughts? It is really disappointing when I finally decide to do a minimum of tank maintenance and my fish all croak, especially that blue ram.
Thanks,
Rachael
My city has very hard water, I think at least a PH of 8. I have a semi planted tank, it is a 20 gallon with 2 good sized swords, a lot of anacharis, a marimo ball, some green and white acorus, mondo grass and new bacopa and banana plant. Anyway, in the tank I had an opaline gourami, 4 corys, 2 otocinclus, a few platies and a bumblebee cat. I almost never change my water, but I top it off very regularly so I don't hear the water falling. I know that's not ideal, but I'm trying to give background info. So 2 times now when I did a larger water change, all of my fish got very sick and 1/2 or more died. The first time was a couple months ago, about a 40% water change, and the second time was a few days ago, I hadn't been topping it off and I added about 4 gallons. And then my new dwarf cichlid, 3 platies, 2 otos, a bumblebee cat, and a cory died.
What would cause this? My only thoughts are that either my water conditioner is crappy, or that the plants have softened the water so much that adding my city's hard water shocked the fish. These are all hardy fish though, that recently made it through an ich breakout and tolerate my complete lack of water changes.
Any thoughts? It is really disappointing when I finally decide to do a minimum of tank maintenance and my fish all croak, especially that blue ram.
Thanks,
Rachael