3rd death in a week plz help me

[MyGiants]

Hi all ive been posting about this situation previously but my fish keep dying un fortuanlty i havent invested in my own water test kit but i will do that soon hopefully i took a sample to get tested at the local petco and the lady said that my nitrate levels were off the charts and most likely they were being poisned which kinda makes sense becuase there seems to be nothing wrong with them they are just dying randomly she suggested that i do A 25 percent water change today 10 percent tomorrow and ten percent on friday and come basck with another sample anyone have any other ideas i really want to prevent my other fish from dying they mean alot to me have had some for over 2 years now the only other thing ive seen is them scartching on rocks alot and twitching which lead me to believe they had internal parasites should i move them to a bigger 75 gallong ive had set up for 2 months now the nitrate levels arent off the charts as in this tank maybe that will stablize them any help[ would be greatly appraciated

I assume this is not a new tank. You had some fish for over 2 years and high "Nitrate" so its a really mature tank. Twitching scratching on rocks could be a few reasons. If you cannot see any visible parasites like ich they could be gill flukes. But you don't want to treat anything until you get your water right. Another thing I suspect since this tank is over 2 years old is a very low ph. Low ph can cause fish those same symptoms and fish to die suddenly. Tanks this old ph is always going down even with regular water changes. What happens is a build up of organic waste in the gravel and filter drives the ph down. If it gets to low below 5.5 this stress fish and they will start to drop like flies. Doing huge water changes may even shock the fish and may only be a temporary fix. What needs to be done is a gravel vac and filter cleaning but not 100%. You want to leave at least 50% of the waste so not to completely remove all your nitrification bacteria that is cycling your tank. If you just done alot of recent water changes testing ph may not give you accurate low reading if it is a low ph problem. But if you hadn't done a gravel vac recently or ever I would do a 50% gravel vac and lightly rinse heavy solids off your filter media.

 

[Sab_Fan]

Nitrite is very toxic. Do you want to reduce its levels by 10% or by a lot more than that?

The next question to answer is why do you have nitrites? What did you do to your filter recently?

he said his "nitrates" were off the charts, not "nitrites" . . . now, he may have a problem there too, but I didn't see where he said that . . .

 

[wvera05]

Hey just a quick update I have been doing water changes almost everyday while adding decholrenator and amquel and it has seemed to stabalize my tank, im going to perform another water change then take my samples to get tested again maybe at another store this time, I felt like I didnt get the proper attention I needed at petco, ive read the dangers of having low ph im not sure if it is low as the lady kinda blew me off but if it is ive seen products that say lower or raise ph should I invest in those at all ???? thanks again for all the advice

 

[MyGiants]

You need to buy a ph test kit they don't cost that much. You can use Bakingsoda, its sodium bicarbonate will raise ph. But you need a test kit so you don't raise it to far off the other end LOL.