peacock bass sudden death

[Tripletail]

Sorry for all the peacocks dieing lately,to you who have lost them. I have had my share of peacock bass die ,most from something I did,or a chain of events I caused. I also have terriblely low water hardness from the city water supply. To combat this problem I age water for a week ,and add buffer to my water to stabilize it, If I don`t do this my ph crashes and I lose alot of fish after water changes . Also, If you add prime to low hardness water it crashes ph. (from my experiance) . I don`t want to fight about prime,or any other water treatment being best. I still use prime as it is what I am familiar with. I just would like to bring this to peoples attention about hardness being so important. Before I figured this out , I would grow up my pride and joy nice peacock bass ,only to have them start spinning, crash into tank,and die in front of me. It wasn`t always right after water change , but close to. Maybe Kendragon can shed some light on Fish alkalosis and Fish acidosis symptoms. I think Ken ,you would have seen some of this with koi ? When a pond goes from very acid (no maintenance)to where it needs to be alkaline (good maintenance) . Do you adjust ponds very slowly to bring them back to ph balance ? Well, that is what I know (or think I know) lol

 

[kendragon]

I would say if your pH swings that much your water is not buffered. Low pH (acid) is usually not a problem. It's high pH (alkaline) with the presences of ammonia that is toxic. Higher the pH the more toxic.
In my experience with koi ponds, pH during maintenance is not a concern nor do we try to control it.
Based on the little info you have provided I high doubt pH is the culprit. I would lean more towards nitrate as the killer.

 

[Tripletail]

Ken, I made a mistake and used Ph instead of hardness in my question. What I was trying to ask you is how do you deal with low hardness, poor buffering capacity in koi ponds ? What methods, and what speed do you raise buffering capacity to ideal conditions. Sorry for confusion.

 

[kendragon]

Oh, I misunderstood your question. Sorry.
You are correct the soft water is bad at buffering which allows for pH swings or crashes.
It's not so bad for concrete ponds but liner or plastic ponds, keepers put blocks of plaster of paris as a buffer. Japanese also put mineral/clay made especially for koi ponds. So for properly buffered ponds, the swing from soft to hard is really not an issue. However, kois are pigs and not sensitive like some tropical fish.
So good point Tripletail, our tanks are like plastic ponds but it still come down to proper buffering to prevent pH swings.

 

[Tripletail]

Thanks for your reply Ken.