Help!!!!!!!!

[drillsar]

My pleco is laying on his back now for 2 days.. I checked the water and my ph was at 6.0 which I know is low. I did a 20 % Water change Yesterday and still reads 6.0

Can the PH level cause the pleco in stress or is it something else?

I also have a Oscar and Parrot fish in tank...

I beleive my PH level should be at 6.8 correct?

Temp is 79 degrees
Everything else reads 0 in tank (nitrate, etc)

I also added 11 teaspoons of Aquarium Salt..

HELP!!!!!!!!

[MonoSebaelover]

Welcome to Aquaria Central. What size tank is this in? Your right pH is pretty low but ti shouldn't be causing that much stress especially if it stayed constant like that for awhile. Have there been any other sudden changes in anything (swings in anything?). Anyway, hope this helps and hope he gets better.

[drillsar]

Its in a 55gal. Should I make daily water changes like 10% until it gets better?

[JSchmidt]

How low does your pH test go? In some cases, if 6 is the lowest it reads, you could have a much lower pH (e.g., 4) and not even know it.

Jim

[drillsar]

I didnt think of that.. Thats true. My kit goes only to 6.0.

[drillsar]

Now its normal but has white spots im thinking Ick, Does anyone have what it could be? Im guessing the Aquarium salt helped out. Im adding PH up right now. Im thinking of moving him to a 10gal tank and treating him there but first should I raise the PH and then move him? Or should I move him now?

[JSchmidt]

We need to know some additional info before we can help you make good decisions. First of all, what is the pH of your tap water, after the water has sat out overnight or has been vigorously aerated for at least a half hour? The pH of your tap water is very important, because if it's terribly discrepant from your tank water, your course of action will be different than if both tank and tap water have the same pH.

You mention that 'everything else' reads zero... what does 'everything else' include? Do you have test kits for KH (carbonate hardness) or GH (general hardness)? If not, will your LFS test a sample of tank water for you to find out what KH and GH are? That would help a lot...

For how long has the tank been set up and occupied? If you're getting zero nitrates when you test, it's either a relatively new (and probably uncycled tank) or it's heavily planted (which seems unlikely given you have an oscar). What sort of maintenance schedule do you follow (e.g., water changes)

I'd hold off adding anything else (e.g., salt) until you have a handle on what's going on. A fairly conservative course of action would be to commence daily water changes of 10-15%. I can't think of any scenario where that will hurt anything, and it almost always help to step up the water changes when fish show signs of illness.

With a bit more info, we can hopefully offer you some things to try.

Good luck,
Jim

[drillsar]

Crap he died. I checked my Tap water and the PH is 7.2 And my tank reads 6.0 still I used PH up now for 3 days.. Why cant I get the PH up?

[JSchmidt]

Since you don't provide much info we can only guess...

Here's mine: Your tap water has very low carbonate hardness (KH). KH buffers your water and helps it resist changes, esp. downward, in pH. With little buffering, your water is susceptible to rapidly dropping pH as a consequence of any type of acid.

Acids are naturally produced in aquaria as part of the process by nitrogen metabolites (e.g., ammonia & nitrite) are oxidized. This process, sometimes called bioacidification, often won't have a strong effect on pH if buffering is adequate.

In addition to bioacidification causing problems in water with low KH, it can also be a symptom of insufficient maintenence: water changes that are too small or too infrequent, insufficient gravel vacuuming, etc.

Your pH has probably dropped so low that you'd need a lot of pH Up to cause it to register on your test. A better strategy is to get some crushed coral and put a half cup or so in filter bag (or nylon stocking) and place it in the filter or somewhere where water current will pass over it. The coral will slowly dissolve and bring up KH; this will slowly bring pH up also. If you get a KH test, you want to shoot for about 3 degrees KH (or about 90-100 ppm KH).

One thing for you to watch for: as you bring pH up, you'll probably go thru another cycle, assuming your tank has even cycled. When pH drops very low, the nitrogen-oxidizing bacteria slow down and/or die. If pH jumps sharply, ammonia, which exists as non-toxic ammonium at lower pH, becomes toxic at higher pH. As all this ammonia becomes toxic, the biofilter is not able to keep up with it and you can see skyrocketing ammonia and nitrite. For this reason, you'll need to keep an eye on ammonia/nitrite as pH rises.

This is only one possible scenario of what might be happening in your tank. You'll need to provide add'l info (see my previous message) if you want suggestions tailored to your problem.

Jim