Plants melting, fish fins fraying

S

slink

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Jan 1, 2008
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Just recently I've found that in addition to my crypts which have melted away, my amazon swords are starting to melt too. One of the leaves is going "transparent" in the upper half and this is not a good sign. I've noticed that my bumblebee gobies' tails are fraying as is one of my german blue rams, looking something like tail rot but I don't think so since some of the fish are having it worse than the others. Before this I'd notice that the barbels of my cories would shrink and disappear over time as well. I'm noticing my mossball is going brown a bit. I add in Seachem's Flourish every other day and standard flourish every few days. I've got a 16 gallon tank.

Ammonia is zero and it seems that nitrates and nitrites are both near those levels as well. pH, however, seems to consistently rise to 7.4-7.6. I have dumped in plenty of Seachem's neutral regulator but that doesn't seem to do much. I can't explain what is keeping the pH so high and, from my understanding, that might be what is causing these plants to die.

Still... I'm in the land of mystery and hoping someone can help me figure out this puzzle.
 
What test kit are you using? Fin rot and barbel loss are signs of poor water quality.

pH has little effect of both fish and plants. That shouldn't be your problem. Stop using chemicals and let the pH stay at it's stable level.

What is your lighting? Do you have a carbon source (ie excel, DIY CO2)?
 
I'll try more frequent water changes but levels all seemed to be excellent.

No DIY CO2 as using the diffusers caused too much noise and didn't seem to do a lot (I had the Red Sea kit or something like that with the bottle.) Lighting is only 16w but when I used the stronger one I'd get algae like you don't know. Right now I'm still fighting green spot algae on a number of plants and not sure what is causing it mostly there and on rocks (but not on glass.) Thanks.
 
I'm not sure, but it sounds like an ammonia issue to me. How long have you had the plants? If you just bought them, they may have been grown out of the water, and now the emergent leaves are drowning.
 
What I want to know is what source of misinformation tells people that a pH of 7.4 is high.
 
no one said it was high. He was speaking comparitively, 7.4 is higher than 7.0, which is what he is going for. It should be stressed here that 7.4 is a perfectly acceptable ph for most fish and plants, so you may want to consider leaving it there and just stocking with things that don't need acidic water.
 
Without wanting to get into a side argument, I parsed "I can't explain what is keeping the pH so high" as being the OPer thinking that 7.4 was a high pH.

I don't think there's a freswhwater fish or plant in the world which wouldn't be fine at 7.4.
 
slink said:
I'll try more frequent water changes but levels all seemed to be excellent.

No DIY CO2 as using the diffusers caused too much noise and didn't seem to do a lot (I had the Red Sea kit or something like that with the bottle.) Lighting is only 16w but when I used the stronger one I'd get algae like you don't know. Right now I'm still fighting green spot algae on a number of plants and not sure what is causing it mostly there and on rocks (but not on glass.) Thanks.
Click to expand...
What type of test kit though? And what are exact readings for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate?
 
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