low ph cause death? help plz

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T

tscharf

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 17, 2009
1,291
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Bowie MD
so i had a redtail catfish and one morning i woke up to find his whiskers were torn to bits and disintegrating. I had to leave for class soon so i did a quick water change and tested my parameters. the ammonia and nitrates were at 0 and the ph was low at around6.0, which is the lowest my test goes so it could have been lower.

figuring it was just my red tail being sick i figured hed get over it. when i got home he was dead. figuring it was just him being sick , i went and got a few fish yesterday to restock the tank. i also added some salt and melfix to the tank as well as benficial biological bacteria. when i woke up this morning all the fish were dead.

im wondering if the low ph could have caused the death this fast. the symptoms of the catfish death were deteriorating whiskers and eventually red spots on his underside. later the GTs seemed fine, but when i woke up this morning they had white stuff on the edges of there fins and around there eyes? could this be ph or was it a fungus? i couldnt quite tell if it was just fin rot on the GTs or if it indeed was a fungus.

any help you guys could give me would be greatly appreciated.
 
I doubt that a fungus took them out in one day. I would recommend testing your water parameters again to ensure that your biological filtration is working.

How big of a tank is it?
 
took a water sample to house of tropicals and they gave me alot of good info, it was deff ph and my ph test just didnt catch it, my ph was extremely low and they gave me stuff to buffer it and advised me to keep out my water change regime. i pretty much stuck my fish in acid, i feel so horrible about it, deff gunna be more careful. my tap ph is about 7.5
 
Clean your filter pads and gravel really good too.

Decomposed debris (detritus) accumulates in gravel and filter media and eventually softens your tank's water and any new water that passes over it. When the water is soft, the pH will drop very quickly if not instantly. Tap water is usually hard water and because of that the pH is stable and high.

I wouldn't rely on buffers so much, but I would investigate the source of the problem.
 
sounds great... thanks for your help
 
You might want to drain, clean and start from scratch. I personally wouldn't try to treat the current water all the while killing off new stock. I'd just start over cycle the water with some small goldies and then move on.
 
I doubt it was the ph that killed your fish. Don't use those buffers, it's the worst thing you can do. What is your water change schedule like?
 
well the tanks empty now, so i pretty much did that, drained the tank down almost all the way, as far as the siphon would allow for, and cleaned both the fx5 and fluval 305 i have on my tank. hopefully thatll work
 
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