Hi,
I have been having continual problems with my clown loaches, and in fact, now they are all gone. The problem was largely from 'sudden' deaths which occur within a few hours. I have identified a pattern that these deaths seem to occur after water changes/addition of CO2/addition of medication.
From my investigations I think the symptoms displayed by the loaches is some kind of osmotic/ph shock which insues over 4 - 24hrs (lethargic>loose equilibrium>die). Other fish (incl 3 guppies etc) are also dying sporadically of 'water quality' diseases that weakens them, and only ever effects a few individuals - like fin-rot, mouth-fungus etc. All other loaches (yo-yo, zebra, chain), mollies (2), shrimps(2) and all my tetras have so far survived unscathed (9). Tank is 80l.
I have bought a better test kit, and last night I checked the water perameters of both my tank and a bucket of standing tap water (1 day, that I usually then add to my tank). I also got a reading from the water company re. the tap water. Some points of interest below (?)
Ammonia, Nitrite, Iron levels - 0 in all
Nitrate slightly elevated in tap water to 7.5mg, 12.5mg in tank.
PH 7.3 in tap water, 7.6 in standing tap water, 8.3 in tank(!).
GH 360 and KH 320 in standing water (that is 3 times off the scale of levels mentioned as the max. in my test kit literature). This only reduces to 340 and 300 in the tank.
Calcium 100mg/l (well, actually I stopped adding the drops as I got bored - so it could be more than that!)
PO4 2.5mg/l in standing water, 1mg/l in tank (I have an issue with black algae too..)
Sodium levels are also above the reccomended limit for drinking water, in the waterboards assesment of my tap water (50-60.. doin't know measurements - mg/l?).
Through posts on this site I have ruled out other potential killers like water changing routine, heavy metals, chloramine, chemicals in air, disease, loss of biofilter, over-crowding etc.
I really am of the opinion that it is the addition of these chemicals/co2/new water (that could be messing up the ph of the water) and that, together with the stress of the water's hardness, is causing the problems. Could I be right?
If so, how can I reduce the water ph/hardness? I know you can get RO systems, but I don't have a convenient tap to put them too. Are ion exchange resins an option? What are they and where do they go? Is there a danger the KH/GH/PH could fall too quickly if I add these systems? could I end up spending money for nothing?
I really want to buy a big tank and get some clowns, but without knowing I can control the water problems, I am ruling it out.
Lots of questions, but a little confused!!
Thanks,
Kathryn
KH GH PH PO4 issues!
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Gary Herring
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Hi again Kat,
Really sorry to hear about your clowns, although if I remember rightly it was probably inevitable in the end with all the problems you were having. Also its good to hear your making the effort to get everything right before you get any more.
Couple significant points from your list of water parameters;
If your ph at the tap is 7.3, and its going up to 8.3 in the tank then this is a problem, and something must be causing it to raise to that level. What gravel are you using? or rocks? I'm thinking you must have something calciferous in the tank for the ph to shoot up like that. With a ph as high as that, whatever it is caused by, it really is no wonder your clowns died when you had a problem with your bio - filter. The further up the ph scale you go, the more lethal ammonia becomes. This is becouse there are two forms of ammonia - NO3 (un-ionised), which is highly toxic, and NO4(ionised) which is comparitively (but not completely!) harmless. At low ph, ie. acid, most of the total ammonia is in NO4 form, and as the ph scale increases, so does the ratio of NO3 to NO4, so by the time you get to ph 8.3 as yours is, the ammonia is almost completely made up of the toxic NO3.
Basically, at a ph of 8.3, only a comparitively small amount of ammonia is lethal to a fish, whereas at an acid ph the same amount of ammonia would be fairly harmless.
Aside from the ammonia issue, which is easily avoidable by not buggering up your bio-filter (step AWAY from the interpet no. 1376542)
, a ph at that level is far, far, far to high for clown loaches in any case. I'm no clown expert, but I know that in the wild they (can) live in blackwaters with a ph of around 5. I'm not sure what the upper ph limit in an for them is in an aquarium, but im damn sure its under 7.5 ish.
Also, your hardness levels are frighteningly high. 360 ppm works out at about 20 dGH, which is way to much for clowns to live happily - or probably even survive at all.
If you wanted to keep rift lake cichlids, your water as it is would be perfect. But if you definately want to keep clown loaches, you MUST soften your water before adding it to the tank, and there is only one realistic way of doing this - using RO water, perhaps 50% RO to 50% tap, or whatever gets the ph and hardness down to accepable levels. Forget ion-exchange resins - the ion that is exchanged for the hardness is sodium (salt) - which the loaches would'nt appreciate very much.
If you use RO softened water, do a FULL fishless cycle first, and take your time and do everything by the book, then there is no reason why you cannot keep clown loaches succesfully.
Also, as long as you learn from past mistakes, you have the benefit of experience this time!
Good luck with the new tank!
Gary
Really sorry to hear about your clowns, although if I remember rightly it was probably inevitable in the end with all the problems you were having. Also its good to hear your making the effort to get everything right before you get any more.
Couple significant points from your list of water parameters;
If your ph at the tap is 7.3, and its going up to 8.3 in the tank then this is a problem, and something must be causing it to raise to that level. What gravel are you using? or rocks? I'm thinking you must have something calciferous in the tank for the ph to shoot up like that. With a ph as high as that, whatever it is caused by, it really is no wonder your clowns died when you had a problem with your bio - filter. The further up the ph scale you go, the more lethal ammonia becomes. This is becouse there are two forms of ammonia - NO3 (un-ionised), which is highly toxic, and NO4(ionised) which is comparitively (but not completely!) harmless. At low ph, ie. acid, most of the total ammonia is in NO4 form, and as the ph scale increases, so does the ratio of NO3 to NO4, so by the time you get to ph 8.3 as yours is, the ammonia is almost completely made up of the toxic NO3.
Basically, at a ph of 8.3, only a comparitively small amount of ammonia is lethal to a fish, whereas at an acid ph the same amount of ammonia would be fairly harmless.
Aside from the ammonia issue, which is easily avoidable by not buggering up your bio-filter (step AWAY from the interpet no. 1376542)
, a ph at that level is far, far, far to high for clown loaches in any case. I'm no clown expert, but I know that in the wild they (can) live in blackwaters with a ph of around 5. I'm not sure what the upper ph limit in an for them is in an aquarium, but im damn sure its under 7.5 ish.Also, your hardness levels are frighteningly high. 360 ppm works out at about 20 dGH, which is way to much for clowns to live happily - or probably even survive at all.
If you wanted to keep rift lake cichlids, your water as it is would be perfect. But if you definately want to keep clown loaches, you MUST soften your water before adding it to the tank, and there is only one realistic way of doing this - using RO water, perhaps 50% RO to 50% tap, or whatever gets the ph and hardness down to accepable levels. Forget ion-exchange resins - the ion that is exchanged for the hardness is sodium (salt) - which the loaches would'nt appreciate very much.
If you use RO softened water, do a FULL fishless cycle first, and take your time and do everything by the book, then there is no reason why you cannot keep clown loaches succesfully.
Also, as long as you learn from past mistakes, you have the benefit of experience this time!
Good luck with the new tank!
Gary
PH and Hardness
Thank you very much.
Yes, I think you are right. My partner is quite technical, so I will drag him along to the fish shop on Sat, to see if there is a possibility of installing a RO system. I hear they can be relatively cheap compared to loosing zillions of fish!.
What you say explains a few things, because the fish shop near me has more African Cichlids and Oscars (not sure if they are the same thing??!!) than tropicals - I have never seen so many!! They also have loads of mollies and tetras. The clowns were quite hard to come by.
The fish shop assured me that the gravel was not calciferous when I asked, and my partner has different (less decorative) gravel in his tank - and his PH is the same! He is having less problems though as his fish are mollies and an angel (which is so old it's almost indestructable!). No matter how much I remind him, he never changes the water, and they all still live!
I had read somewhere that CO2 can escape from tap water (explaining rise from tap to standing water). However, where the extra rise from standing to tank comes from I don't know!
I am going to look into starting again, or rethinking for cichlids (not the same as clownies though
). If I do, I will definately do a fishless cycle with different gravel - and buy a bigger tank if I keep clowns. Thanks again.
Kat
Yes, I think you are right. My partner is quite technical, so I will drag him along to the fish shop on Sat, to see if there is a possibility of installing a RO system. I hear they can be relatively cheap compared to loosing zillions of fish!.
What you say explains a few things, because the fish shop near me has more African Cichlids and Oscars (not sure if they are the same thing??!!) than tropicals - I have never seen so many!! They also have loads of mollies and tetras. The clowns were quite hard to come by.
The fish shop assured me that the gravel was not calciferous when I asked, and my partner has different (less decorative) gravel in his tank - and his PH is the same! He is having less problems though as his fish are mollies and an angel (which is so old it's almost indestructable!). No matter how much I remind him, he never changes the water, and they all still live!
I had read somewhere that CO2 can escape from tap water (explaining rise from tap to standing water). However, where the extra rise from standing to tank comes from I don't know!
I am going to look into starting again, or rethinking for cichlids (not the same as clownies though
). If I do, I will definately do a fishless cycle with different gravel - and buy a bigger tank if I keep clowns. Thanks again.Kat
Your kH is through the roof, and that is what the problem is. My kH is 2, which is too low and causes my pH to drop. The 320 reading you are getting is higher than I have ever heard of...and apparantly it is buffering your water up. Unless you get that kH down, then your pH will always go up in your tank. You wouldn't even need rocks, your water practically IS rock! RO water will help a lot, you can use mostly that, and add enough tap water to give it a little bit of a buffer so it doesn't crash.
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Gary Herring
- Posts: 189
- Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:53 am
- Location: Swindon, England
Yes, but the KH is 320 out of the tap and the ph is 7.3, so surely there still has to be something in the tank thats making the ph increase further still? The readings in the tank are KH 300 and ph 8.3, so the (admittedly huge) buffer is being slightly eaten into by the carbonic acid produced in the tank, whilst at the same time the ph is increasing.
If the high tank ph was caused solely by the KH out of the tap, would'nt the tapwater ph be as high as it is in the tank?
If the high tank ph was caused solely by the KH out of the tap, would'nt the tapwater ph be as high as it is in the tank?
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DarrenMnaples
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Gary, I would have to say no. It wouldn't have to be. I do think Kathryn's water is treated water, right? Not well water? So it doesn't have the chance to reach that equilibrium as it does in the tank. They screw around with it before they send it on it's way. My tap is an example of it, although in the opposite direction. They pump it into my house at neutral pH. But the KH is only around 2, so it doesn't have the buffering capacity to stay up there at 7.0, and crashes to about 5.8 in the tank. Her KH number is very very high so it makes sense to me that it would buffer up automatically. I bet if she put it in a plastic bucket and left it sitting it'd do the same thing in time.Gary Herring wrote:Yes, but the KH is 320 out of the tap and the ph is 7.3, so surely there still has to be something in the tank thats making the ph increase further still? The readings in the tank are KH 300 and ph 8.3, so the (admittedly huge) buffer is being slightly eaten into by the carbonic acid produced in the tank, whilst at the same time the ph is increasing.
If the high tank ph was caused solely by the KH out of the tap, would'nt the tapwater ph be as high as it is in the tank?
Darren, IME, with very hard water that powder doesn't work. I used to have extremely hard water and I tried it. It just doesn't have the power to keep it down. I'm sure it would be fine for raising, and who knows, maybe for lowering very slightly. I never checked out what the ingredients actually were because at the time I didn't understand much about the relationship between pH and the buffering capacity (KH).
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Gary Herring
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- Location: Swindon, England
Fair enough, I'll bow to your superior knowledge on that one! (albeit with a but....)
Whilst I of course understand how low KH can cause a pH crash, I'm still not sure quite how a high KH can cause it to suddenly 'crash upwards', if you know what I mean.
Acid is a natural by-product of the natural aquarium processes, which the KH in the water 'absorbs' or 'buffers' thereby keeping the pH stable. But if there is a very low KH, the buffering capacity will be exceeded causing a pH crash.
What I can't quite fathom is how the above could work in reverse, except perhaps if the tank water was oxygen saturated with very little CO2. In that case then maybe the water when drawn from the tap contains CO2 (or something else) which keeps the pH down, then when the water gets in the tank, the CO2 (or something else) is driven off meaning the KH is then 'free' to push the pH up to its potential highest point?
So basically something is 'buffering the buffer' when the water is first drawn from the tap, which is then absent when the water is in the tank.
Feel free to correct me if im talking rubbish!
Whilst I of course understand how low KH can cause a pH crash, I'm still not sure quite how a high KH can cause it to suddenly 'crash upwards', if you know what I mean.
Acid is a natural by-product of the natural aquarium processes, which the KH in the water 'absorbs' or 'buffers' thereby keeping the pH stable. But if there is a very low KH, the buffering capacity will be exceeded causing a pH crash.
What I can't quite fathom is how the above could work in reverse, except perhaps if the tank water was oxygen saturated with very little CO2. In that case then maybe the water when drawn from the tap contains CO2 (or something else) which keeps the pH down, then when the water gets in the tank, the CO2 (or something else) is driven off meaning the KH is then 'free' to push the pH up to its potential highest point?
So basically something is 'buffering the buffer' when the water is first drawn from the tap, which is then absent when the water is in the tank.
Feel free to correct me if im talking rubbish!
Most water treatment plants do oxygenate the water before sending it to the taps. I have the same thing happen to me it comes from the tap at approx ph of 7 but my tanks all 5 of them have ph of 7.8ish upon last check and the water is hard. Not the same jump but a jump in the same direction. I'll try and test again tomorrow and see what the exacts are if your interested.
Double check
Hi,
I have double checked my water over the weekend, this time using standing water that was standing for 2-3days (rather than 1 day as last time). I did the tests with boyfriend present so as to check I wasn't doing anything wrong!
Tap - KH 200mg/l - GH 300mg/l - PH 7.4
Standing - KH 190mg/l - GH 300mg/l - PH 7.6
Tank - KH 160mg/l - GH 280mg/l - PH 8.3
The KH reading is a lot lower - maybe I got a bit mixed up - or it varies. However, I don't think it makes much of a difference, as it is still off the scale! The PH are spot on what I had last time, regardless of this, and GH almost identical.
If the water was oxygenated by the water company would this escape in the standing water - would it take a long time?
I have an airstone and a pump in my tank to maximise O2 which would increase O2 levels beyond the norm at bit... RE. buffering the buffer - Could reduction in PO4, or the high Na be making O2?
I have found out the LFS does RO water. They say to dilute with normal water, as the RO water has nothing in it. They reckon you can keep the water for up to 1 week without an airstone in it.... I am not sure how I'm going to dilute it with the declorinated tap water without adding too much declorinator as I only have a 10l bucket. Does anyone else have a small tank and do this? What procedure do they use?
Thanks for all your help everyone!
Kat
I have double checked my water over the weekend, this time using standing water that was standing for 2-3days (rather than 1 day as last time). I did the tests with boyfriend present so as to check I wasn't doing anything wrong!
Tap - KH 200mg/l - GH 300mg/l - PH 7.4
Standing - KH 190mg/l - GH 300mg/l - PH 7.6
Tank - KH 160mg/l - GH 280mg/l - PH 8.3
The KH reading is a lot lower - maybe I got a bit mixed up - or it varies. However, I don't think it makes much of a difference, as it is still off the scale! The PH are spot on what I had last time, regardless of this, and GH almost identical.
If the water was oxygenated by the water company would this escape in the standing water - would it take a long time?
I have an airstone and a pump in my tank to maximise O2 which would increase O2 levels beyond the norm at bit... RE. buffering the buffer - Could reduction in PO4, or the high Na be making O2?
I have found out the LFS does RO water. They say to dilute with normal water, as the RO water has nothing in it. They reckon you can keep the water for up to 1 week without an airstone in it.... I am not sure how I'm going to dilute it with the declorinated tap water without adding too much declorinator as I only have a 10l bucket. Does anyone else have a small tank and do this? What procedure do they use?
Thanks for all your help everyone!
Kat
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Gary Herring
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- Location: Swindon, England
Oh no!TammyLiz wrote:Gary, I didn't mean to sound like I have superior knowledge. I don't. By all means continue with your speculation because I wouldn't be offended if you proved me wrong.
Did you think I was being sarcastic? I did'nt mean it like that at all! I was'nt totally sure of that part of the ph/kh thing so I just meant that you probably know better than me, thats all - I meant it genuinely.-
Gary Herring
- Posts: 189
- Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:53 am
- Location: Swindon, England
Hi Kat,
Basically, if you are sure that there are no sources of additional alkaline in the tank - which it seems you are - then as Tammy said the only explaination for the high pH is the KH from the water supply. Quite why the pH does'nt show it's highest level untill the water reaches the tank, I am still not 100% sure. It could be that something acidic (CO2?) is holding it down at the tap, which is then driven off causing it to raise to the high level you are getting in the tank, but ultimately this is irrelivant. If you use RO to soften the water, you'll be able to get all of the hardness and pH readings down to acceptable levels for clown loaches.
Your LFS have given you good advice - RO water as well as being stripped of all the bad stuff like chlorine, phosphate and nitrate, is also stripped of the good stuff like electrolytes, minerals and micro-nutriants, which to varying degrees depending on what type, fish need. Also, in RO water obviously all of the KH is removed too, so you need to add a buffer to stop the pH crashing.
To partially re-mineralise RO water you can just add tap water - in your case you'd probably only need around 1 part tap to 4 parts RO (aim for around 3-5 dKH and dGH) - or alternatively you can buy minerals in liquid or powder form from some LFS's (I use this method). It will tell you how much to add on the packet, but again, aim for 3-5 dKH / GH.
Basically, if you are sure that there are no sources of additional alkaline in the tank - which it seems you are - then as Tammy said the only explaination for the high pH is the KH from the water supply. Quite why the pH does'nt show it's highest level untill the water reaches the tank, I am still not 100% sure. It could be that something acidic (CO2?) is holding it down at the tap, which is then driven off causing it to raise to the high level you are getting in the tank, but ultimately this is irrelivant. If you use RO to soften the water, you'll be able to get all of the hardness and pH readings down to acceptable levels for clown loaches.
Your LFS have given you good advice - RO water as well as being stripped of all the bad stuff like chlorine, phosphate and nitrate, is also stripped of the good stuff like electrolytes, minerals and micro-nutriants, which to varying degrees depending on what type, fish need. Also, in RO water obviously all of the KH is removed too, so you need to add a buffer to stop the pH crashing.
To partially re-mineralise RO water you can just add tap water - in your case you'd probably only need around 1 part tap to 4 parts RO (aim for around 3-5 dKH and dGH) - or alternatively you can buy minerals in liquid or powder form from some LFS's (I use this method). It will tell you how much to add on the packet, but again, aim for 3-5 dKH / GH.
RO water
Thanks,
I am sure it is the way forwards! Adding the base straight to the water sounds easier - but how do you then heat it to the right temp for the fish? I may go with the tapwater mix option, and get a measuring jug so I know I can repeat the same mix to get right GH/KH.
thanks,
Kat
I am sure it is the way forwards! Adding the base straight to the water sounds easier - but how do you then heat it to the right temp for the fish? I may go with the tapwater mix option, and get a measuring jug so I know I can repeat the same mix to get right GH/KH.
thanks,
Kat
How rapidly are you adding replacement water or any chemicals? Anything that changes the character of the water has to be added quite slowly. If the water is cold then you need to let it warm up before you add it into the tank.
I fill a 55 gal plastic water storage barrel with RO water and fill it at least a day before I need to use any water.
I fill a 55 gal plastic water storage barrel with RO water and fill it at least a day before I need to use any water.
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