Need Help With Water Conditions Asap!!

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rockinmom45

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Feb 7, 2004
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HELP!! I HAVE A 25 GAL ESTABLISHED TANK THAT HAS AN AMMONIA PROBLEM.. I HAVE HARD WATER (VERY ALKALINE) I DID 2 WATER CHANGES, USING REVERSE OSMOSIS WATER THE LAST TIME AND USED A GRAVEL VACUME EACH TIME.. I CANT SEEM TO LOWER THE NITRATE LEVEL OR BALANCE THE PH. I HAVE 2 BLACKFIN TETRAS, 2 PLATYS, 2 GORAMI AND AN ALGE EATER IN THE TANK. I HAVE TRIED EASY BALANCE AND PH DECREASER .. NO LUCK. I HAVE ALSO INSERTED 2 AMMONIA ABSORBING PILLOWS ..
THE ONLY "PET SUPPLY " STORE WITHN 100 MILES IS A WALMART.. ANY SUGGESTIONS GREATLY APPRECIATED!!! THANKS,
ROCK:sad :confused:
 
You're doing pretty much everything you can. What your pH value?
 
rockinmom45.... we really do need to know what your levels are to be able to say anything helpful
 
If your water is very hard you'll never get the ph down. Keep doing the water changes with the r/o and it will come down on it's own. Been There, done that. Keep doing 30 percent changes daily and it will come down. All you can really do right now. Don't panic and make too many changes or you'll be startin a new tank.
 
Why do you want the pH down? My tetras in my community tank live happily at 7.6 pH.

Constantly changing the pH is more stressful on fish than any one specific pH. Also R/O water doesn't have enough essential minerals in the water to let your fish live. If you want I would mix the R/O with tap water at 50/50 and just do regular water changes with that. It will eventually and slowly lower your water's pH. Doing it slowly will allow the fish to adjust.

Don't add those Ph changing solutions as they usually cuase more trouble than they are worth.

As for ammonia, keep testing it and do appropriate water changes to bring it back down to zero. Stay away from those pillows, water changes are the best thing you can do.

Oh and please don't type in all capitols. It is hard to read and considered to be yelling on forums.
 
chlorine or chloramine?

Call the water department and see if they are adding chloramine to the water. If so, your water conditioner must treat for chloramine AND handle the ammonia that results from the breaking of the chloramine bond. That ammonia may be showing up on the test kit you are using, even though it is "bound" and not harmful to your fish. If you ammonia test uses two bottles of reagent, it may be the right kind to test for unbound ammonia only. If it uses one bottle, or strips, then it is reading bound+unbound and is useless for your water.

Then, how big a water change are you doing? what is the actual level of nitrate read? Is that nitrAte or nitrIte? Nitrate is OK at 20 or 40 ppm (picky fishkeepers prefer 20ppm), Nitrite is bad and you need big water changes to get it near undetectable.

I assume you are in the midst of cycling, how long has this tank been set up? is that algae eater a pleco? How big is he?

if this is an established tank, as you said, why wuld it be cycling now? If the water service changed to chloramine and didn't tell you, that might be part of it. Otherwise, something died or killed your biofilter, have you used ay medications lately?
 
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