Its a 180 gallon. And there was 6 Poly's plus one fire eel but 5 now ,lost one a retropinnis and one fire eel
Just canister filtration
Nitrates 160ppm
- Thread starter HumanBean
- Start date
Just canister filtration
The drop in Ph itself if it's the only parameter that dropped is certainly not lethal and doesn't affect fish much. Such rapid Ph drop people with injected CO2 cause every day. The reason behind it is because the Kh itself is not affected by a weak acid such as CO2. So the real problem is when one's Kh drops which in turn it pulls the Ph down which we have learned to call a Ph shock but in reality it's not the Ph that causes the issue. If the Kh has dropped over time, this is due to strong acidification which happens in time in any non-maintained, overstocked/overfed tanks(fry tanks for example) or simply the water changes have not been big enough and often enough and over time the tank gets very acidic. The other issue is if you drop/increase the TDS(total dissolved solids) rapidly which is basically altering the chemistry of the water rapidly, and in turn alter the Kh as well as Gh, fish need to adjust and may not make it.
Those that are talking about fish being affected by a drop in Ph or nitrates are actually talking about "old tank syndrome" where acidification has happened and water has become way more acidic, sometimes so bad that although your fish may have adjusted to it, any new fish may die unless very slowly acclimated.
In such a tank, when you do a sudden big water change, you rapidly change the Kh back up, which pulls the Ph back up and the TDS drops because tank water's TDS if not water changed, increases to hundreds of ppm. Clean water bringsthe TDS down. Hence you shock the fish.
Solution in this scenario is once you level the tank stats with the tap water via small daily water changes, start doing large weekly or twice weekly water changes to never let the water get so acidic(low ph, low kh) and so full of dissolved organics(high TDS)
Right, I agree 100%, I was simply replying to the post about why someone suggested pulling the nitrates down slowly.
I'm going to say the tank may be underfiltered, and that can is becoming a nitrate factory since its doing all the work for the tank. add another can or a sump, or both lol. I think that may be why your nitrates are soaring.
I beg to differ.
The issue in not properly maintained tanks is Dissolved Organics in the water and natural acidification(as I explained above) These are the results of nitrification, decomposition and a ton of other chemical processes producing all sorts of harmful stuff. When dissolved organics(think of it as a cocktail of dissolved organic minerals of all sorts) are present in high amount in the water, oxygen levels get depleted/have been depleting pretty fast possibly even outcompeting fish. Fish are sensitive to both low oxygen and high dissolved organics(think discus fish, their natural waters are void of any dissolved organics or organic minerals). Nitrates are just a drop in the ocean of what happens in a tank, and if we were able to measure them accurately and they are high, it would be one way to indicate that the tank has gone through a lot of nitrification(oxygen depletion) possibly because of overstocking/overfeeding/non-water changing, and nitrates are the result of the cause, not the cause itself. They are part of the organic build up in a tank, but one of the non-toxic/non-lethal parts unless we talk over 300/400ppm. In this scenario your tank's TDS(total dissolved solids) would be in the thousands..... So why not just use a TDS pen(costs 20 bucks for life) which shows conductivity accurately within seconds just by dipping it in the water and keep it at a certain level, close to the tap water level.....This way you know for sure where you stand with water quality...
Would you elaborate why? I understand it's been engraved in every one's mind about high nitrates killing fish but that's the old school understanding, when the only things we measured was nitrates and we used nitrates as indication of water quality. Nitrates on their own do not kill fish. Ask again planted tanks forums. People sometimes dump nitrates in the hundreds without causing any issues to fish at all.
no no, I'm not one for debates, you can have the win
. End of the day, OP needs to add filtration and up water changes, judging from the symptoms, regardless of what is causing it, his fish need O2. lol.