Emergency Chemistry Help!!

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guess_who44039

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Apr 20, 2004
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Hi all, I have a major problem with the chemistry of my water. I have a 55 gallon with a Whisper Power 60 filter along with an underground filter. The tank has been up and running for just about 4 months. The tank contains 5 penta-barbs (ca. 1 in. each), 3 balas (ca. 4 in.), 1 albino gourami (ca. 6 in.), 1 powder blue gourami (ca. 2 in.), 1 fuzzy tiger pleco (ca. 3 in.), and 1 common pleco (ca. 8 in.). I had been keeping up with the tank with testing every couple days at first, then I started slacking because everything was good. Well for the past 3 weeks I've been battling to get my ammonia levels down (my test kit has a color coded card, yellow being 0ppm, gradually shading down to dark green, 8.0ppm). When I tested the water, I watched the colore change all through the scale, past green to blue. Nitrite is 0ppm. pH I hope is 6.0 (the reference card only goes to 6 and is light yellow, my water is a little more golden). I've used ammo-lock to detoxify the ammonia, and have been adding stress-zyme to help establish more bacteria (stress-zyme for about a week). I know the problem started when I cleaned the filter bio-bags. I'm kind of a newbie, and didn't quite understand the whole biological filter thing. Well, I know I need to do a partial water change, but how much? I don't want to get rid of whatever bacteria I have! Any suggestions on chemicals, or bacterial additives I could use to help stablize my levels? I'd like to get an external bio-filter that hangs off the back of the tank, with like a sand substrate, but heard they're expensive. Any suggestions are sincerely welcomed!

Sincerely,

Slowly Killing Myfish
 

OrionGirl

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Aug 14, 2001
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Do several mid-sized water changes, as needed to dilute the ammonia to tolerable levels. In 55, I'd go with a series of 20 gallon water changes as needed. Get the temp close, treat for chlorine/chloramine, and go for it. Keep in mind--the beneficial bacteria are not free-floating in the water column. They attach themselves to a media--gravel, sponges, filter pads, decorations, etc. So water changes don't really make any difference to them, and will help the fish immensely.

For your pH--what is the pH of your source water, after it's aerated/sat out overnight? What is the KH? The biological processes that deal with ammonia create acids that reduce the buffering ability of your water. If your water has a low KH, less than about 3, you can have problems maintaining a stable pH. there are fixes for this, but we'll need to know the true pH and KH first. Please, do not try the pH Up chemicals, as they will result in fluctuations that can kill your fish.
 

guess_who44039

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Apr 20, 2004
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Ok, should I do the water changes with distilled water? The pH of the tap water I use is right at 7. I was using stress coat to dechlorinate (is that a word?) the water, but I'm not sure if our water company uses chlorine or chloramine, and was told that if the water is treated with chloramine, stress coat leaves the ammonia behind after it takes care of the chlorine...that's mainly why I bought the ammo-lock, because it says it takes care of it all. Would you suggest I used water left out for a night(s), as opposed to treating the water? Now with the distilled water, I know it doesn't have any of the minerals that the tap water has, but my GH is high (tested at a degree of 11), and either I got some defective KH test strips, or the KH is so low, it doesn't change the color of the pad. Can you increase KH without increasing GH?, and how would I go about increasing the KH? As soon as I get back to my house, I'll use the test strips to test the KH of the tap water and let you know (it's close to 5pm now, I'll be back there no later than 7pm). The fishies look good...they're lively, and don't seem to be "suffering" I guess, but then again, I'm not livin in the tank with 'em...lol Those little guys could be just crying out for help...:sad
Well anyway thank you, and you all do a great job with this site!

~Jeff
 

OrionGirl

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Contact your water utility and find out for sure if your water has chloramines. If not, leaving it out overnight will allow the chlorine to gas off, but chloramines must be treated. Amquel and Prine are good choices--they don't include other additives, and wil bind the ammonia into a non-toxic form--but you'll have to check your test kit, as some ammonia tests show total ammonia and ammonium, giving false positives.

Distilled water should not be used for aquariums. It will result in some serious pH crashes, as the KH levels drop.

Search in General Freshwater on baking soda--there are several threads on using it to bring up your KH. Another option is adding a bit of crushed coral to your tank, either in the substrate or in a baggie in the filter. This might cause a gradual increase in pH, but that's okay--the key is to keep it stable.
 

johnnyxxl

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Mar 1, 2004
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If the water is just chlorine treated other than the temperature you can gas off over night and not add anything to get rid of chlorine, or if you use a chemical you can add almost immediately. I would suspect maybe that your change of the filter pad was the cause of the crash but it should fix itself as you do the water changes and leave the filter pad there until its a rag and no longer works.
 

guess_who44039

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Apr 20, 2004
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I just checked the KH of my tap water and it came up 140ppm, about 7.8 degree. My water treatment plant is closed, so I did a little experiment. The test kit I have will give a positive reading for ammonia that has been detoxified, so I took a cup of tap water, treated it with ammo-lock (to separate the ammonia from the chlorine), then tested it...took a control sample of plain tap water and tested it (there shouldn't be any ammonia in it...hopefully, lol). If the water is treated with chlorine, the test results for ammonia should be 0ppm, right? But if it's treated with chloramine, the ammonia that gets separated from the chlorine will test positive...and it did. Regular water tested 0ppm and the ammo-lock'ed tested just under .25ppm. Did that test make sense? So that means I can't just let the water sit out, I have to treat it for a water change, right? How exciting...
 
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OrionGirl

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Right. And using something like Prime or Amquel will bind the ammonia into ammonium, and not expose your fish to ammonia.
 

guess_who44039

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OK thank you, I'll go pick up some Amquel today, do a 20g change tonight. How long shouldI wait for my levels to stabilize before I feel the need to do another change? Thanks again for all of your help. Long live the fishies!

~Jeff

picture 34.jpg
 

OrionGirl

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I do water changes on all my tanks each week. There are a couple of ways to decide when you do them--all will work, maybe not for you though. Testing for nitrates is the common indicator--while nitrates are not toxic, they can indicate if other, untestable substances are building up. Keeping them less than 20 is a good goal for most tanks. If you have plants, though, you'll need to make some judgement calls. If you have high evaporation rates, for example, you'll do better doing frequent water changes instead of constantly topping off. I advise picking a schedule--once a week, or once every two weeks for lightly stocked tanks, and just sticking with that. Basically, doing too few will be far worse than doing lots.
 
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