Hi

Have just lost a bn pleco, balloon molly and now a bloodfin terta. Tested my water levels and my ammonia is 0, nitrite 0, nitrates just gone up to about 30 and my pH has dropped to 6.4.

I am running de-nitrate and purgien and doing water changes for the nitrate. My pH was originally high so got some driftwood to bring down but seems too low now. Any suggestions how to bring up? Tap water is 7.6

Am at a loss, so upset about losing my fish

6.4 is perfectly fine for your fish, I would doubt that its the cause of your losses.

Thanks. Am just not sure what is going wrong.

Nothing is going wrong, it is normal for pH to fluctuate to a certain degree, more so if you have low hardness.

Also it is hard to judge pH best bet is to measure it the same time 3 days in a row and that will give you the average pH

Went to LFS store today and got some crushed oyster shells. Was told to put in half the bag so 250gr and would bring my level up slowly over a few days. Put into my drip filter. Was sitting at about 6.5. Just checked and up to about 6.8 already, have I put in to much. Concerned raising to quickly as not having much luck, lost 3 fish in last 2 weeks. Please help

Re-read my previous post.

Adding crushed shell will increase your hardness, which may be worse for your fish than any minor fluctuations in pH. A small change in pH like that will not kill your fish, in fact they won't even notice it. Stop stressing about your pH and try work out what is actually killing your fish. Tell us a little more about your set up, stock, maintenance etc.

AR 980 215l with drip filter. Also running a canister filter. 2 air stones. Tank is planted, mixture of different plants and a large piece of driftwood. Have 4 scissortails, 3 balloon mollies, 5 bloodfin terta, 2 platys, 3 danio and about 15 molly fry.

Water parameters are ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10. Tank temperature between 25.5 and 26.5.

10% water changes weekly, use prime and stability.

Hi. How long has the tank been set up?

4 months now. Cycled for a month before fish

Any fish added recently? What, if any, were the symptoms before they died? I wonder if a new fish has had an infection of some sort that your other fish had not encountered before and had no resistance to it.

My two platys nearly 4 weeks ago, prior to that a week before 2 female balloon mollies, one of which has passed. My albino bn lost colour, danio was swimming oddly and my balloon molly who had had the babies was sitting behind the filter bar. No marks or visible signs on any of them.

Do think I was over feeding to compensate for the fry. Have cut feeding down and good gravel clean which possibly was my bn issue. May of stirred up bad bacteria? As had not gravel cleaned for two weeks (worried about sticking up fry) only water changes.