What is this

[Molson Ice]

Got my water tested... what’s the difference with PH and high range PH?
Ok so here’s my water
Ph 7.6
High rang Ph 8.8
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 160
I did a about a 35% water change and I plan on doing another water change tomorrow.
I did not remove any plants yet and I cut open a new filter cartridge, removed the carbon and placed into my filter.

 

[Angellove78]

Got my water tested... what’s the difference with PH and high range PH?
Ok so here’s my water
Ph 7.6
High rang Ph 8.8
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 160
I did a about a 35% water change and I plan on doing another water change tomorrow.
I did not remove any plants yet and I cut open a new filter cartridge, removed the carbon and placed into my filter.

Holly! Your nitrate is not good. And your ph is pretty high too. That tank needs some cleaning and filter probably needs cleaned or new pad. Water changes also! A.s.a.p.

 

[coralbandit]

160 is as high as test go under normal use.
You need to change a lot of water. Your level could be much higher in fact.
The % you change is the % the nitrates will be reduced.
So if it was 160 and we say you changed 33% then you still have 110 aprox..
Most think 40 to be top of safe range . If the level was even higher[it probably is]
Then 35% will need to done 5-10 more times..Might just want to try more if you can safely. 50% will get you back to safe quicker. I would do 2 more @35% to not shock the fish then up to 50% to get under 40 preferably around 10-20 for a starting point before you reach 40 again.
It would be helpful if you had your own test kit, then we could find out how high it really is.

 

[King Fisher]

How would artificial plants cause pH swings?

If you get your test kit and find that you don’t have a mini cycle going on then you could probably safely take them out and clean them or replace them. But considering you just took a big chunk of beneficial bacteria out of your filter, I wouldn’t recommend pulling out hardscape too right now. The algae may not look very pretty, but that kind of cleaning isn’t the kind that will help the fish right now.

Just cutting out the carbon would have been perfectly sufficient. If you’ve kept the cartridges wet dump out the carbon and put them back in. if not it doesn’t much matter because the bacteria will be dead if they dried out.

A lot of BB is in the substrate

 

[Molson Ice]

Just thought I would give an update. Gunther, our fish, is doing much better.
His eye has almost totally cleared up, there is just a small little speck of white on his eye. Thank you everyone for all your help.

 

[libertybelle]

Glad to hear it!