I wanted to provide an update to all the water mess I've gone through and since this thread ended up having a ton of info, I figured I'd post here. Just for reference, as I go into mentioning quantities of an additive, it will be based on 20 gallons of RO or RO/DI water.
In the beginning, I had issues with PH from the tap then PH using RO and Alkaline buffers. I can say I'm finally getting this under control. I'm going to try and go through all the water and ecosystem mess bit by bit.
Starting with PH:
I started using RO/DI water after determining my well parameters are not great, but with with the excessive CO2 in my well, the DI resin is shot before I can even treat 40 gallons. I pulled TDS readings with and with the DI. Without, it is roughly 9ppm. With DI, it is 0. SO negligible. Coming out of the RO, parameters are:
PH: 6
Ammonia, Nitrite, NItrate: 0
dGH: 0
dKH: 0
If I let the RO sit, it will stabilize a PH of 6.4 with no additional additives so it was not CO2 offgassing which is what I thought was causing the large spike.
In order to remineralize my water, I add:
14 gram Seachem Equilibrium - gets 4 dGH
(currently) 7 gram Seachem Alkaline buffer - gets 3dKH
(currently) 3.5 gram Seachem Acid Buffer
Flourish (1x week)
Flourish Trace (2x week)
Fresh Trace (1x week)
I was still seeing PH jump after 24 hours and determined it is the Alkaline buffer being its sodium bicarbonate based (thanks
@Colin_T ). I was using 14g Alk and 7g Acid, but would still get PH up to 8.2 and only a dKH of 5. Dropping it in half, I get a PH max of 7.6 so will be dropping a bit more. I have been seeing others with this issue and Seachem always seems to insist that won't happen. Well, it does. Crushed coral is probably a better option for KH and not spiking your PH.
With such a swing, it was making it really hard to acclimate fish coming from my LFS parameters.
Now, with getting more and more plants, I added a Chihiros light and CO2. The CO2 while on drops my PH to exact 7 and with dialing back my Alk buffer, it is minimizing the swing over the course of 24 hours. Going from 7 when lights/CO2 on to 7.6 with lights/CO2 off. Overall my fish seem a lot happier, plants are finally growing.
Algae:
I started getting a ton of green hair algae and blue/green algae. I dealt with the blue green using the Blue/Green slime remover. The green was getting lights and ferts under control. I'm still dealing with the green a little, but nowhere near as bad and mostly because it was on a couple of my decorations from the initial growth.
Worms:
Dealt with and have had no issues after treating my tank.
New issue:
Damn snails. Came from some Alder cones that I decided to try. I pull some every day and removed all the Alder cones and continue to remove as I see them. If it comes to it, I'll try the boiled lettuce idea and see if I can snare a bunch if they continue to be more of a nuisance. I typically pull about 3 a day (UPDATE: Pull over 10 a day), but are still small so trying to catch the little ones before they breed. Also gravel clean with water changes.
Water Changes:
I now do weekly 50% water changes with RO water, remineralized with the mentioned products above. I will be upgrading my RO system since it takes 2 days even with a 100gpd RO buddy from Amazon. I'll be move to an AquaFX 300gpd system. Yes, I do things big and many times overkill, but will also be able to use a larger system for my beer brewing hobby as well so its worth it in my eyes.
Hopefully I covered everything, but overall after patience and time, things may be looking up. Now if I can get my wife to stop wanting 30 different types of fish with only a couple of each after I told here that there are certain things they need to be stress free. I also have a 5 gallon QT that I'll use to put all new fish in to monitor before adding to the main. I'm sticking to soft water fish. Currently have some Tetras, but looking at adding Rasporas and of course will be adding 2 Angelfish since that was my wifes favorite and should be ok. I'm hoping to get my stocking back up over the next few months. I only have 14 fish left from all this mess. I'll be adding slowly so the bio media can adapt to the increasing load.
