fish dieing for no reason

[Onna Shinigami]

Sorry I was answering one when another came up, had to think a bit of everything to answer. I only have a test kit for the pH and amonia at the moment, I've looked into buying one that has the rest of them but haven't been able to affored them. The tank had been set up for about 3 months prior to buying the sailfins. The filter is a hangon type and it's cleaned about every 2 weeks.

 

[kvr]

Re: Some advice about mollies for you

Originally posted by FISHGUY_CA

Also when a fish dies and remains in the tank, it causes a ph spike in the water and will cause the other fish to become irrate towards each other when they realize hey, what's going on here this water is too hot and I don't feel so hot now.

I suppose you mean a nitrite spike ??? I don't see why a dying fish would give a pH spike.

May I be so free to give you some advice FISHGUY_CA ? I know you mean all the advice well, but would it not be possible to stick to the original topic (I'm not only talking about this post here) ? I'm not saying that the advice you're giving is wrong, just a bit off topic sometimes

As for the molly, I'd also suspect some kind of problems related to her giving birth. The reason for the fry dying is not clear however, maybe a small nitrite spike (eg if your dead molly was in the tank for a little while ?)

 

[kvr]

Originally posted by Onna Shinigami
The pH is about 7.8 or so there is little to no ammonia in the tank.

The amount of ammonia in a tank IS related to the pH. At low pH levels, the ammoniak (NH3) will convert to ammonium (NH4+). So the higher the pH, the less ammonia will be present, but the more ammoniak you will find. However, test kits for "ammonia" are actually test kits for "ammonium+ammoniak", so the readings will be the same, no matter what the pH in the tank is.

 

[Argento13]

Im a little nervous about entering this debate but has anyone mentioned that room temp. of 70 degrees is not recomended for keeping fish?

 

[Onna Shinigami]

I've got heaters for my tanks just that they're a bit old and they don't heat very well. I've tested a few already and just sitting there they heat up to about 90 F.