About 8 months i purchased a betta from a chain pet store for my girlfriend for a present. Before i bought it i obtained one of the 5 gallon hex tank kits. It was a fish less cycle that ran for a month. I could never get the ammonia below .25 on the test kit but the nitrate was climbing and the nitrite was not there so i thought the test kit had expired since it was a few years old. The betta was introduced with no problems and weekly water changes were performed. Then about 3 weeks ago was midterms for our college and i neglected two water changes. One morning she noticed that the betta had developed pop eye. That night i did a water change seeing no abrasions to him so i figured it was a water quality issue. The next day i also performed a water change and this seemed to put him on the mend. i tested the water again and the ammonia was at .25 again and the nitrate was high at about 100, which i figured was due to the two weeks missed. The nitrite was 0 but the curious thing was the pH. It was down to 6.5 when the tap water reads 7.5. i thought this might be due to the ramshornn snails that i introduced to help control the algae problems the tank had been having. I thought that the snails might be taking the hardness out of the water and taking away the buffer. This is when i adopted a three day a week water change and this did seem to help. Also, he was reduced to a once a day feeding and i obtained a sponge filter that i placed in the tank with an air pump. Then yesterday life again intervened and i missed one. his eye became worse again. I did a water change today and i tested the water again. The ammonia held steady at 0.25 and the nitrite was 0 and the nitrate was 10, this was after i had obtained a new test kit. This time the pH had dropped to 6.0. This has me concerned and i did not know if this was something more serious than water quality and if perhaps i should take a new approach. The temperature has been steadily between 78 and 80 degrees sense he was obtained. Any ideas are appreciated.
I know the pictures are not the best but i only have a phone and if better ones are needed than i can try to obtain a proper camera.
I know the pictures are not the best but i only have a phone and if better ones are needed than i can try to obtain a proper camera.