Dead fish lowering PH or vice versa?

[Ira]

I found my electric blue dead yesterday.

I don't know how long she was dead, I don't remember seeing her wednesday night when I did a water change or at night when I fed them, but that's not unusual. I THINK she might have been dead for a while because the tank was smelling really nasty and was oily on top. I checked the PH, ammonia and nitrates. Everything was fine except for the PH, it was 6ish. Now, could a fish rotting in the tank drop the PH a lot or would it have been the low PH that killed her?

I know the low PH is bad, I'm working on fixing it, going to put a bit of baking soda in today and tomorrow I'm going to see if I can find a digital PH meter.

I thought I had the PH in the tank sorted before I started doing an extra 50% water change each week. It WAS sitting at about 6.8ish. I guess the extra change eliminated most of the buffering capacity from the bit of crushed shells in the filter, gravel or whatever.

[ajbroome]

Ira said...

> I found my electric blue dead yesterday.

Bummer :-(

> I THINK she might have been dead for a while because the

> tank was smelling really nasty and was oily on top.

Sounds like classic 'big dead fish kept warm for a couple of days'

situation to me.

> ...could a fish rotting in the tank drop the PH a lot

Many of the products of decay are acidic and in an unbuffered

environment that could drop the pH...

> ... would it have been the low PH that killed her?

Hard to say. Originally, fish like the 'electric blue' are from

alkaline and hard conditions...

> I know the low PH is bad

It is for fish that require more alkaline conditions. For many

other fish it would be fine.

> I guess the extra change eliminated most of the buffering

> capacity from the bit of crushed shells in the filter, gravel

> or whatever.

You're not changing it with RO or DI water are you? Regular

tap water tends to be somewhat hard and alkaline out of the

tap since this stops it dissolving the pipes in the reticulation

system...

Sorry I can't actually tell you what killed your fish :-(

Andrew.

[Ira]

Yeah, I do use tap water, but my house is on tank water. So the only minerals dissolved in it would be whatever it absorbs on the way from the clouds to the gutters to the tank. Probably all that's in it is a bit of organics and no real minerals. I SHOULD get a hardness test kit.

[ajbroome]

Ira said...

> Yeah, I do use tap water, but my house is on tank water.

Ah, well, there you go then. All bets are off. You're using

essentially rainwater.

> I SHOULD get a hardness test kit.

Yeah, you probably should. You might also want to think

about concentrating on working with softwater fish...

Andrew.

[Pegasus]

Hi Ira, AJ.

Sorry to hear about your loss Ira.

Hi AJ,

I too use only tank water, and prior to that, (whenever possible) would use rainwater, even from the very beginning of my fishkeeping interests.

I was compaining about the price of test kits in the Welcome section. For just three general tests they wanted $129 bucks.

Thing about the rainwater is that provided it is well filtered, as mine is, you can be pretty sure it is safe, whereas with town supply you are at the mercy of the supplier, who may, or may not add goodness knows what to the supply.

The rainwater is I suppose the basic fluid which we can alter as we need to, but altering the town supply can be a bit daunting at times, especially since it can vary so much from day to day.

Regards,

Bill.

[Ira]

Damnit,damnit,damnit,damnit! Now my electric yellow is dead this morning. He wasn't looking very good yesterday, so I'm not that surprised. I'm guessing this would point the finger at the low PH being the cause seeing as both africans in the tank died in the last two days. I added 1/4 tablespoon of baking soda yesterday and that brought the PH up a few tenths(Or at least made the water in the test tube a slight bit bluer, not sure exactly how much), but I didn't want to go too much right away and overshoot 7.

[Derek]

Ira, If you want to determine how much baking soda needs to be added to your tank without overshooting 7. Try the following.

1. Make up a stock solution of baking soda (the actual concentration doesn't matter) For example, several tablespoons in a couple of cups of water.

2. Take a litre of aquarium water and start adding the stock solution to it incrementally and record how much you have added. Raid your medicine cabinet for the mesuring cup used to measure out cough syrup etc so you can be "reasonably" accurate.

3. Measure the pH after each addition.

4. Once you have reached pH 7 extrapolate how much is needed to do the same in your aquarium.

For example if it took 10mls of stock solution to bring 1 litre of aquarium water to pH 7 then it would take 500mls of stock solution to do the same to a 50 litre aquarium

5. Still add the baking soda to your tank slowly and monitor the pH as you do it. You will not have an exact measurement of the water volume in your tank.

I would also check your ammonia levels. If they are detectable go and get some ammolock.

[Ira]

I thought of doing that. Actually, I might still do it for future reference. But for now I thought I'll wait until I get the PH meter and just go straight to step 5. Lower hutt dick smith has 5 digital PH meters for $130. Not too bad of a price, I think, since I can also use it to check the PH in the spa pool. So it's only $65 for the tanks and $65 for the spa pool.

I checked the ammonia levels when I found the electric blue dead. They were undetectable. I'd have thought they'd have gone up a bit if she was rotting in there for a while, but guess not. I'll check again when I'm adjusting the PH. It only takes a second anyway.

[Ira]

According to the PH meter the tank is at 6.2, my tap water is 6.95ish, and the other two tanks are 6.9 and 6.8. What else can I check the PH of? Ah, spa pool! 7.9 Ouch. Gotta fix that too, got new chemicals for it yesterday though. I tried a 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda in a small cup and it only read as 8 from the 7ish tap water, but when I poured that same amount into the tank yesterday it raised the PH about .2ish.

Anyone got any tips on using these? Do you keep stirring until the meter stabilizes? It seems to bounce back and forth by about .03 of a PH either way no matter how much stirring I do.

[Derek]

Don't worry about 0.03.

The important thing is that the pH is calibrated accurately. Did you get any buffers of known pH to calibrate your pH meter with? If it is not calibrated correctly it could be reading pH 6 when the real pH is 7 or even vice verca.

[Ira]

Yup, it came with a little bottle of PH 7 buffered solution.

[Fee]

Hi Ira,

What filtration are you using? what other fish are in the tank? and did the cichlids eyes go cloudy before they died?

[Ira]

Fluval 404, other fish are a gold severum runt, a big gold severum, 3 silver sharks, a small striped mystus and a bigger silver mystus, 2 big Geophagus jurupari, 2 small geo surinamensis, a small pictus, 2 blue rams, a keyhole, a big redspot Ummm...Oh, a small firemouth. I think that's it. Their eyes didn't go cloudy, not that I noticed at least. I didn't notice anything wrong with the Electric blue before she died, but the electric yellow was looking a bit beat up and off color the day before he died.

[john1]

Dereks comment regarding trying it out in a couple of liters of water then interpolating it is the most sensible thing I've heard for a long time.

Anything going wrong with that test setup will not kill your fish .

An example here. A waterconditioner, which supposed to add hardness was used in a test bucket. I added 3 times the amount stated. It did nothing to the hardness. All it did lower the pH!!. Could be dangerous to some fish. So don't believe blindly everything you read on the packet, bottle etc.

John

[Ira]

What I did was just add a heaped 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to the tank(premixed in a small glass) and then measured the PH again about an hour later to give it time to get well mixed. The end result was that the 1/4 teaspoon raises the PH by about .2.

[CID in OZ]

Sodium bicarbonate or baking soda raises ph

Epsom salt will raise hardness

Raise it slow and give the tank a 20% water change every 2nd

day over a week to bring it back

Use an alkaline substrate to buff the water to a workable 7.5-8.0ph

Chris D

[Ira]

In this case, 7.5-8 is NOT a workable PH. The tank is all south americans now that the two africans are dead. They were quite happy before the PH dropped.

[CID in OZ]

Hey Ira

I detect that you are not controlled by the dark side

(AKA the world of blue fish) by your post

What Sth Americans did you have the Africans in with

as it seems a curious mix to me but a valid reason for

the ph drop happening

Chris D

[john1]

Hi there

I see quite a few of you use rainwater. Sounds good. Pure. But is it. In some parts of the world if you would rainwater, Contaminated with socalled 'acid rain', then you can say goodbye to your fish, and to yourself if you happen to drink it.

John

[Ira]

My part of the world isn't contaminated by acid rain. I think the reason the PH is dropping so rapidly is because the rainwater doesn't have any buffering capacity so any acids will cause a larger drop in PH. And the tank has a pretty heavy bioload. I've just upgraded the fish to a 400 liter tank and the PH was just barely over 6 when I tested it today. It's only been set up for less than a week. And apparently the nitrogen cycle creates nitric acid which lowers the PH. Need to get some crushed coral, limestone, dolomite or something to keep it up. Can't find any though.

The rest of the fish that the two africans were in with were 2 Geophagus Jurupari, 2 Geo. Surinamensis, a firemouth, 2 gold severums, a Keyhole, 2 Mystus Catfish, a pictus, a redspot pleco, 3 bristlenose, 3 silver sharks and...Ummm...I think that's it.

[john1]

Hi Ira

You probably know that already,but, try it anyway. Apart from an electronic pH meter I also have an ordianary one. It contains the usual blue stuff AND pH-up and pH-down. It did wonders in my tank

John

[Pegasus]

Hey Ira,

If you are still searching for Dolomite, and don't have an Eqestrian shop or one that handles horse gear, then try your local Vet. It's used widely in the horse world, but as I said, we used it for the frisky stallions not on tropcals, but as far as I know, Dolomite is Dolomite.

It can be bought in powder or tablet form, and you I would think should consider the tablets.

Searching for crushed oyster shell ??

Any pet supply shop has it, also any places that supply chicken food as it's used by birds of many types.

Last resort, send me $20 bucks and I'll ship you all you want, fresh and just off the oyster. We have an oyster farm a few miles away.

Bill (Pegasus)

[cees]

Ira : no I haven't found any yet apparently it's 'mined' in the nelson area somewhere.

[kluyu]

The oyster shell may be your best bet. You can often find it, as Pegasus says, in feed stores where it's sold as chicken grit. Just be sure to check that it is made from shell, as a lot of chicken grit is made of crushed granite & would have no effect at all on your problem.

Where I live, my water (well water) is massively buffered by the calcium carbonate & magnesium in the ground. The only way my ph goes is up. I have tried many different water-conditioning schemes, and finally given up and just kept fish that like high ph (mine is 8.5 in my tanks). This is not very restrictive, since most fish stores in this whole area have the same ph as do I. They order and stock fish that come from breeders who use higher ph. This includes a bunch of the cichlids on your list.

I keep several angelfish and they do well in my high ph. I used to have oscars also (astronautus ocellatus). They did so well in my high ph waters that they grew at least an inch a month.

I am sure that the fish stores in your area probably have lower ph, if they have a similar water supply to yours, but if they do stock africans, they must have some scheme in place to buffer their water.

You can acclimate fish to higher or lower ph than the shops have, and have them thrive. What is deadly is the sudden changes. If I were in your shoes, I would think about the substrate additions. I believe that oyster shell would be pretty good for a natural substrate amendation. It is primarily calcium silicate, and this dissolves less readily than calcium carbonate (limestone) and should be cheap as well. It would also be stable.

The problem with most water modification plans is that they require you to do water mods every time you change the water, and are a real headache in the long run. With the shell addition, you could simply make smaller water changes more often and not have to worry about dosing water each time.

In re the nitrification cycle. I can see that with your low ph that this could present a problem. Nitric acids do occur. The impact they have on your tank can be lessened to a great extent by having good circulation and aeration in your tank. It really makes a big difference.

[john1]

Hi there

I live in Hampton Park, Victoria. The pH which comes straight from the tap is 8.1 (measured with an electronic pH meter). The dKH is almost unmeasurable. So I added "BETTA" water KH hardener. Works. My pH is at the moment 6.9. Before the "Betta" treatment it went down to 6.4, which is a bit worrying. Pegasus mentioned 'dolomite' and the like. Works well if you have it. If not, then there are other ways to lower or increase.

With additives.

John