Hello

[lilsd]

New to aquarium keeping and I’m already going down the rabbit hole! I am finding a TON of info online but sometimes it’s conflicting, so I’m hoping to get some advice from people more experienced than myself, I am very much learning the ropes as I go here!

I live in a tiny apartment in NYC and have set up a pretty heavily planted 10 gallon tank. It’s 9 weeks into cycling and water parameters are stable. My pH is pretty high (8-8.2) which is one thing I’d like to troubleshoot here.

Right now I have some ramshorn snails that hitchhiked in on my plants, and have recently added 10 neocaridina shrimp that seem to be doing well. I would like to add some fish too in the near future but not decided on which species. Lots to learn!

 

[gwand]

Welcome. What is the pH of your tap water used to fill the 10 g tank? How about GH and KH also?

 

[lilsd]

Thanks for the reply! I am just learning about kh and gh, just got a test kit today.

My tap water ph is a perfect 7, kh and gh both zero.

My tank water ph is right around 8 or slightly above. Kh today was 125ppm and gh was 161ppm.

I do have several large river rocks in my hard scape which might be contributing to the issue? I’ve also added a mesh bag with peat pellets to my filter, it’s been a couple days now and there’s been no significant change.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Welcome! You're off to a good start. I like the look of your tank. If your pH is rising, it probably means you have something--sand or rocks are the usual suspects--that is leaching minerals into the water. I've never had any luck with peat lowering the pH; your mileage may vary. It does add some nice tannins to the water (that yellow-brown tint you see in swamp water and forest streams), which many fish seem to appreciate.

Hardness is generally more important than pH, and your water is quite hard. If your tap water is super soft, that tells us it's definitely coming from something in your tank. Where did you get your sand? My guess is you've got crushed limestone in there.

That gives you two choices: Rescape your tank, being careful to only include silica sand and granite or other inert rocks, or embrace what you have and keep hard water species.

The size of your tank will be the limiting factor there. Endlers, guppies, some of the tinier rainbowfish/blue eyes, and some of the small, less-active danios and barbs might be attractive candidates. Most danios and barbs are too large and active to live in a 10 gallon. Seriouslyfish.com is a good place to start researching candidates to see if they could work for you.

 

[lilsd]

Welcome! You're off to a good start. I like the look of your tank. If your pH is rising, it probably means you have something--sand or rocks are the usual suspects--that is leaching minerals into the water. I've never had any luck with peat lowering the pH; your mileage may vary. It does add some nice tannins to the water (that yellow-brown tint you see in swamp water and forest streams), which many fish seem to appreciate.

Hardness is generally more important than pH, and your water is quite hard. If your tap water is super soft, that tells us it's definitely coming from something in your tank. Where did you get your sand? My guess is you've got crushed limestone in there.

That gives you two choices: Rescape your tank, being careful to only include silica sand and granite or other inert rocks, or embrace what you have and keep hard water species.

The size of your tank will be the limiting factor there. Endlers, guppies, some of the tinier rainbowfish/blue eyes, and some of the small, less-active danios and barbs might be attractive candidates. Most danios and barbs are too large and active to live in a 10 gallon. Seriouslyfish.com is a good place to start researching candidates to see if they could work for you.

This is really helpful, thank you! Actually I think you just figured out what my problem is….

Just checked the bag, and the sand I’m using is oolitic aragonite… it was the only fine sand they had in the aquarium section at petco so I picked it up thinking it must be safe without doing the research…. And now I’m reading that it’s full of calcium and raises ph.

The back half of the tank has deeper substrate with gravel and aqua soil, but the whole thing is capped with the sand.

The thought of breaking the tank down and rescaping it at this point is pretty daunting and I’m not even sure where to start… but I also think the high ph will be a limiting factor in the long run and isn’t ideal for most fish, even ones who can “tolerate” it…?

If I were to rescape it now, would that essentially mean cycling a whole new tank from scratch?

 

[Essjay]

If I were to rescape it now, would that essentially mean cycling a whole new tank from scratch?

Not necessarily. There will be lots of bacteria in the filter and the plants also take up ammonia so you'd just lose the few bacteria in the substrate. If you do lose some it won't take long to make up the numbers again.

I would rescape as it'll make things easier long term. You could then choose fish suitable for your tap water. If you leave the aragonite in the tank and ever need to do a huge water change, the water parameters would change a lot until more aragonite had dissolved. Sometimes we do need to do huge water changes - for example, we've seen members in the past who have accidentally dropped a whole tub of fish food in the tank, or a visiting child who decided to feed the fish a cookie and it took a lot of water changing to get everything out of the tank.

 

[Essjay]

but I also think the high ph will be a limiting factor in the long run

GH is more important than pH for fish. It is better to match fish to the tank's GH and have the pH outside their range.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Yep. If it were me, I'd do a quick switch out of the substrate.You can use "play sand," which is available at most hardware stores. It's very dusty and takes either some work to rinse, or some time for the dust to settle out. I generally don't rinse mine, and just let the cloudy water settle out over time. I tell myself it's to provide the plants with some nutrients, but it could be that I'm just lazy.

Keep the big rocks and the filter media wet so you don't completely lose your cycle. Just put them in buckets of dechlorinated water. In my experience, filter bacteria can survive at least 24 hours with the filter off, as long as you keep the media wet. With a 10g, you should be able to get some sand, do your Rescape in an hour or two, turn everything back on, and Bob's your uncle. It is a setback, and some extra work, but I think in the long run you and your fish will be a lot happier.

One thing to be aware of: In my limited experience, Neocaridina don't like extremely soft water, so you might gradually lose them over time. My tap water has a high pH but is extremely soft (weird, I know), and I'm the only person I know who can't seem to keep red cherry shrimp alive. Amano shrimp (Caridina multidentata) don't seem to mind my soft water, and they live for years, so if you lose your neos you might try some of those.

 

[TC33]

Just to note on the PH, you say your tap water is 7 and tank water is 8.
Leave your tap water for a day before testing it.
Mine is the same, 7 out the tap but after a day it reads 8.

I would certainly do that before doing anything drastic like trying to change the substrate.

Also its not easy to consistantly change the water Hardness or PH without considerable effort (Some people will disagree with me on what they consider effort so this is personal opinion)
Much easier to match the fish to the parameters than the other way around.

 

[lilsd]

So many great tips here, thank you all! I will definitely try testing the tap water after leaving it out for a day. If that doesn’t give me any leads then I think I’ll be doing a re-scape in the coming weeks.

 

[JackGulley]

I love your aquascape! That doesn’t look like someone’s first tank. Some good fish species to consider for a tank that size:
Ember Tetra
Celestial Pearl Danio
Dwarf Emerald Rasbora
Kubotai Rasbora
Green Neon Tetra
Chili Rasbora
Endler’s Livebearer
Sparkling Gourami
Scarlet Badis

 

[emeraldking]

Hi & welcome aboard...
A 9 weeks cycle is longer than most of us would do. But it ensures that you did take a good thing for sure...

 

[lilsd]

I love your aquascape! That doesn’t look like someone’s first tank. Some good fish species to consider for a tank that size:
Ember Tetra
Celestial Pearl Danio
Dwarf Emerald Rasbora
Kubotai Rasbora
Green Neon Tetra
Chili Rasbora
Endler’s Livebearer
Sparkling Gourami
Scarlet Badis

Thank you! I spent a lot of time overthinking and working on it

I originally was going to just put a betta in it, but then I heard a lot of folks say that bettas can be aggressive with shrimp and not sure I want to take that gamble (I wanted the shrimp as a clean up crew…). I want something that will keep populations of baby shrimp & snails in check, but not mess with adults. Maybe a hard ask….

I really like the look of celestial pearl danios but have read they can also be pretty aggressive with adult shrimp. Leaning toward chili rasboras now but not 100% decided. I know I definitely need to get my ph down for chilis.