Here's the story. I have a 75 gallon fish tank that has been up and running for about 5 yrs. The last two years I've maybe lost two fish. So I've had no problems. I had 3 golden barbs, 2 cherry barbs, 3 black tetra, and a pleco. I was a little behind on water changes but nothing big. I added a gold nugget pleco about a week ago. He died the day I bought him. Took a water sample to the store and everything test okay with nitrates a little high. After that my remaining fish started acting funny. Flashing and more than usually activity. I notice some white spots and figured it was Ich. Bought Rid-Ich and did ten day treatment with slowly increasing the temp ... nothing major only think I got it to 80 degrees before most of my fish died. I did break my rule of not using a quarantine tank which I know was a mistake. In an attempt to save the remaining fish I stopped treatment and did a 30% water change. I tested the water the next day with the following results. Ammonia 0 ppm, PH around 7.9 hard to match color, Nitrite 0 ppm, and Nitrate 5 ppm. So now I'm starting to think PH problem but my water has always had a slightly high PH. So I decided to test the tap water for PH. It's almost neutral. So something in my tank is raising the PH. Only other change is that I added a piece of driftwood. But I'm still not convinced it's a PH problem. So now that I'm down to one fish how do I get my tank back up to a point that I feel comfortable adding fish. I'm thinking a heat treatment for three weeks to take care of any possible ick and then adding some New Tank Stabilization to get the biologic filter backup. Then wait another week. So in total I'm looking at a month before adding another fish. Anyone have any advice? First time in seven years I've had such a disaster.
Thanks
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