Need help asap

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Every other day will be fine. Keep the temp up. Add salt back in after a wc and keep the ph up. Hopefully it's not too late but keep us updated. Sorry for the 2 that died already.


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Hopefully you have everything under control now, but I would suggest finding a more permanent way to raise your pH (such as using limestone). It sounds like you might have had a pH crash. Using chemicals to artificially raise the pH can set you up for it unfortunately. Again, hope everything is good now and that the fish return to good health. Sorry for the losses you did have.
 
Im thinking it was my water thats up stairs becuse i have tanks downstairs and the water is always clear as day but upstairs its always milky looking and yes i use dechlorinator

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I just checked the Richmond VA water quality report, your tap water is soft, approx hardness 50ppm, your alkalinity is low 37ppm, and pH is 6.65. These are not bad, simply the kind of water you get in your region of the country
But this is not great water for African rift lake cichlids, and may be why they are stressed out and getting sick.
Because your normal water has a low buffering capacity, it means you will need to do more frequent water changes to keep from having pH crashes. Using a crushed coral based substrate would help, and using baking soda in your "water change water" could also help (but you would need to be careful and monitor water chemistry closely).
A more reasonable approach would be to have fish that live in your kind of water, ie west African cichlids or South American cichlids as opposed to rift lake species.
You should still make frequent water changes with any of cichlid kind though, because the result of low alkalinity and lack of water changes is acidification, which causes stress, which leads to disease.
 
Nice Duane it's great that you can acess water reports from around the country. I agree the addition of a crushed coral substrate along with some sea shells and maybe some coral skeletons would help buffer the ph and increase alkalinaty.

Op you do have some great water for South American cichlids ;)
 
Its very easy to access water parameters from any large city in the US. You type into google search name of the the city and state, followed by "water quality report", and click on the year. All US cities are required to submit a list of chemical and physical test results to to be available to their customers at the end of the year, and you will find everything from the finished water pH, metals, alkalinity, chlorine/chloramine residual, and in some large cities, everything from nicotine to estrogen if it was required (many requirement tests are based on population .
Before I retired as a chemist/microbiologist, it was my job to provide some of this info for the water supplier I worked for. Where I worked we also provided source water info.
Anyone can access this info.
 
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