Holy tank crash of doom Batman!!!

chinnp

In denial of MTS
Mar 24, 2005
540
3
0
I'm a little ticked off and upset right now. My 29 gallon tank crashed for some unknown reason. In two days I lost 4 fish. I immediately did a water change after noticing the first two deaths. Then I noticed another angel was dead later that day and discovered my second dead upside down cat at the same time. I ran tests and discovered nitrite at a little less than .25 ppm. This was after a 10% water change so I'm sure it was higher than that before. This was completely and totally unexpected. The tank has been set up for two months and was set up for two years before I moved it.

Honestly, I hadn't been doing any tests on it or anything since just after I set it up because I'd had no problems with it. The fish were fine one day and the next day they were floating upside down. At least now that I know what the problem is, I can seed the tank from my other two cycled tanks and things should be fine. Any ideas what might have caused this?
 
No, I tested the PH. It was at 7.8 which is normal for my tapwater. We've got pretty hard water here so it's buffered pretty well. Ph was 7.8, Ammonia was 0, Nitrite was a little less than .25 and nitrate was 0.
 
chinnp said:
I ran tests and discovered nitrite at a little less than .25 ppm. This was after a 10% water change so I'm sure it was higher than that before.

Water with no kH can easily be pH modified by almost anything including the CO2 in the air. The waste product of the Nitrogen Cycle is Nitric Acid (HNO3) also known as Nitrates for the NO3- Ion. This can easily bring the pH down and shut the biofilter down. Assumming you did a 10% waterchange prior to testing the pH, the higher pH you posted would be expected as the buffers in the tapwater were re-added to the tank voiding out any low pH result.
 
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