Mystery water killed three fish so far

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
X

xlrustylx

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Mar 3, 2013
10
0
0
United States
So I just moved to the country and we get our water from a spring on the property. No city water :( Eugene, OR city water is awesome. No chlorine or flouride with a perfect pH!

My wife (here comes the laughs) lost 3 bettas in a week. Two were replacements of the previous.

Side note: I'm building some bigger tanks, I promise I'm on the right forum lol.

My wife had one betta for almost a year, we moved and she did a water change and it died in a couple of days. I bought her another and it died in 12 hours. Got my water tested. Guy at LFS said my PH was low. I bought a pH test kit and pH UP. I adjusted the pH to roughly 7.1 to match the pH of the water of the third betta before putting him in the water. He stayed alive and well for a few days and one night came home and he was belly up on the bottom.

I'm baffled as to what could be doing this. I'm no water chemist but my guess is that something is in the water or off with the water.

Does anyone have any insights or ideas? I need to figure this out before I build my big tanks.

Thanks,
Jared
 
wow ,that is kinda rough...gotta be a toxin in the well?:(
 
Yeah I'm gonna pick up a master kit anyway since I'll be keeping some bigger tanks. I didn't have this problem in the city, the water there was perfect.

If a master test kit doesn't show me anything I might have to do some scientific method style experiments with goldfish to see what's wrong with the water.
 
Before you go all mad scientist with the goldfish, check the General Hardness and the alkalinity. Those would be the likely suspects. Probably too low since you had to raise the ph up to neutral.
 
Duncan6618 said:
Before you go all mad scientist with the goldfish, check the General Hardness and the alkalinity. Those would be the likely suspects. Probably too low since you had to raise the ph up to neutral.
Click to expand...

Lol yeah I don't want to kill any more fish. Could heavy metals be a culprit? Or other organic toxins? I doubt pollution is a concern. Oregon is pristine and my landlord has organic certification on the property since it's a farm, probably couldn't have gotten that with a lot of pollution.


I read somewhere that spring water has really low hardness. so you might just be right
 
I WAS thinking metal .. but I am not at ALL familiar with ore. water... good luck ,I will be looking forward to a (positive)update,,,:popcorn:
 
xlrustylx said:
Lol yeah I don't want to kill any more fish. Could heavy metals be a culprit? Or other organic toxins? I doubt pollution is a concern. Oregon is pristine and my landlord has organic certification on the property since it's a farm, probably couldn't have gotten that with a lot of pollution.


I read somewhere that spring water has really low hardness. so you might just be right
Click to expand...

Well anything is possible but I figure since you had to use ph up to raise the ph to 7.1 that the alkalinity (carbonate hardness) is probably really low. Ph Up is a weak solution of sodium carbonate (washing soda) which has a very high ph. So it doesn't take much to raise ph but doesn't do much to raise alkalinity. Usually you want alkalinity to be at least 100ppm to have a stable ph. Really low alkalinity will lead to ph crashes, especially with a betta in an unaerated bowl, they produce CO2...CO2 crashes the ph...betta dies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom