New And I Did It All Wrong...

Right...baking SODA, not powder...I've added about 1 1/2 t. so far...no change, still at what I think is 5 pH. Cories very, very sluggish. Ammonia and NItrites back to 0.

Will pieces of old oyster shells work? I have lots from my vacations to NC....ummm...20 years ago!
 
Yes, the reason you haven't seen anything from the baking soda is that the amounts are too small to go past the buffering point and start the pH rise. BUT, that's ok because in my opinion you shouldn't be messing with baking soda anyway because it is SO quick to change. It is not linear. Once the water gets buffered up (this is what you would know with a KH test) (and the baking soda begins by buffering the water but not raising pH) then all of a sudden the pH would begin to rise much more sharply. This would be great for making you feel like you were finally doing something but it would probably kill the fish because of the speed of the change.

So (just as oldman said) the method of choice with fish in there is usually crushed coral. I have mixed feelings about your oyster shells (collected probably from our beautiful outer banks here in north carolina!) as shells (and coral, which is similar) are certainly the source of calcite, one of the core molecular players in the mineral world of mollusks, corals and all those little fellas that secrete hard white stuff around themselves for protection, and all those sedimentary layers and rocks built up over the ages by our lands having been covered by oceans! You could probably rinse them off, put them in and they'd be fine. On the other hand, I suppose there might be some type of cleaning that the folks who crush up and bag the coral and shells to be sold in aquarium shops do that is worthwhile - there might be some common extra things that need to be worried about or cleaned off, just don't know.

The stuff that I've seen (I picked up a bag once in a PetSmart in north carolina) commonly is Caribsea Florida Crushed Coral (maybe $15 or $20 for a 40 Lb. bag.) and you can put it in a mesh bag and bury it under the taller corner places of your gravel substrate just to hide it. Because an undergravel moves the water a bit more slowly usually, at a given area on the bottom (as opposed to the faster water movement through a container filter) I would expect the action of the crushed coral to be even slower. It takes about 2 or 3 weeks to see an effect from crushed coral, which is about the appropriately slow rate that fish can tolerate with pH changes I would generalize.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. in answer to alysonpeaches about availability of internal filters in the USA: yes, you could simply surf to aquariumguys or any of 100 other online sites, punch in an order in a minute or two and have any of dozens of models of internal filters on your doorstep the next morning! What's on the shelves of the LFS probably varies quite a bit, though, and there may indeed be bigbox pet sections with only HOBs and Externals in many places in the US.
 
I think the more I learn, the more confused I am. My understanding was that the baking soda would raise the pH quickly which is why I was told to put so little in at a time and test, test, test.

I went to PetCo. They had no separate test for water hardness on the shelf. Thus, I purchased the test strips so I would at least have some idea.

These are the readings:

Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Total Hardness 150 gh/ppm
Total Chlorine 0
Total Alkalinity 0 kh/ppm
pH below 6.2 (the strip is very yellow and the chart is orange for 6.2, thus I think it's about 5--that's how much difference there is in the color)

Ok...now please tell me what these readings for gh & kh mean...and what to do.

I purchased the coral sand. How much should I put in the tank? I do not have a fine mesh bag but do have a larger mesh bag...if it stays in one place in the tank, not much will fall out. Do I stop putting in the baking soda?

All the fish are rather sluggish. I'm still going to do my best to keep them alive and stablize the tank. However, I do think our family is coming to accept the fact that even our dearly loved cories will soon die and we will have to start over...the "right" way. With that in mind, I decided to return the in-tank filter (it really would have taken up way too much space in the tank).
 
Oh dear...one of the silver-tip tetras has spent his day near the top of the tank by one of the filters...and his mouth & head look "furry"...

Other silver-tip, x-ray and neon are swimming and eating (just fed them)...

Corries didn't even stir but they appear to be alive.
 
GH (general hardness) of 150 ppm is ~8 dH on the so-called German scale, which is "moderately hard". Unfortunately all your mineral content seems to come from sulphates, because your carbonate hardness (KH, alkalinity) is 0 (a bare minimum level for stable pH would be a KH of 1 (~20 ppm), and 3 (~60 ppm) is generally recommended).

In your case the water has no buffering capacity to speak of. Did you test your tap water too? If that has a KH of 0 too, then feel free to go crazy with the coral sand and add as much of it as can fit in that mesh bag. If my tap water's KH was 0, I'd just use coral sand as substrate to be honest. But for the short term, I'd try to fix the water with bicarbonate, since it'll take a while for the coral sand to dissolve enough to provide decent buffering capacity.

Bicarbonate is a great tool if you know what you're doing, but it can be tricky stuff in the sense that it can change your pH unexpectedly fast like waterdrop said. The speed of the change could be hazardrous to your fish, but then, so are the current conditions in your tank. The silver lining on this particular cloud is that small amounts of bicarbonate will never raise your pH to a level that's lethal in itself (a 0.8% - or 8000 ppm - solution of sodium bicarbonate has a pH of 8.3; you'd need to dump an entire liter of baking soda in your tank to get there). It can, however, get your pH to ~8 at low concentrations. If one teaspoon isn't enough I'd add another (and so on), but I'd do it like this:

Make a stock solution of bicarbonate by dissolving 1 tsp of baking soda with ~1 liter of water in a bottle or whatever is handy. Add this to your tank slowly over an hour or so, ½ cup at a time, to minimize the shock to your fish. Measure your pH after another hour or so (to ensure the tank water has thoroughly mixed). If your pH still isn't in the reasonable range of 6.5 - 7.5, repeat the treatment and measure again. Doing this will give you a pretty good feel of exactly how much baking soda you need to adjust the pH of your tank in the future. Do not use any commercial pH buffering chemicals if you're adjusting your water with bicarbonate.

Just be aware that any rise in pH can kill your fish at this point if you're unlucky. You have ammonia in the water, and ammonia becomes more toxic as pH rises. On the other hand, low pH prevents your filter bacteria from functioning properly, so you'll only get more ammonia if the pH isn't fixed. It's a nasty situation and I don't envy you. :(
 
OK, this is kind of lucky for me. I was re-reading the whole thread (whew! got to be one of the most convoluted ones we've seen!) and by the time I was done, mr bliss had already posted and as it turns out he basically arrived at the same conclusion as I did, so I don't have to type so much, yea!

I am in agreement that the situation is already so bad (which fish are we down to now & how many?) that it makes sense to raise pH somewhat more quickly than we would normally want to. So this is a case where I'd agree to keep going with the baking soda and just use the coral as something coming along later. I was going to say that you'd really have to start at 2 teaspoons and go up from there to start seeing any effect, but I think the mr bliss idea, with the solution in water is a fine one, so go ahead and follow that. Go ahead and get the coral in the bag and into the tank so that it can be coming along slowly and later if the fish live you'll be able to ease off the baking soda.

The analysis is very good I think that the general hardness must be coming from sulphates with no carbonates. KH of zero will certainly let you crash quickly and what's interesting here is just how amazingly fast this tank seems to be able to drop pH from a conditioned tap reading of 7.2 all the way down to those awful acid readings below 6! Even with all the water changes it keeps crashing so fast, seems unusually fast.

I guess we're assuming you're still trying to figure out how to get decent test kits. Probably any good online site that would have the good API or Nutrafin master kit would also carry a KH or GH/KH kit, then you'd have the necessary means of knowing what the heck the baking soda and coral are doing in there.

With this setup, even if you lose all the fish, you're going to need to use baking soda probably to raise any bacteria during a fishless cycle.

~~waterdrop~~
 
I have been mixing the baking soda with water from the tank...about 4 oz. water and 1/4 tsp. baking soda. I test the pH and then add. I can't keep to an hourly schedule but am doing so whenever time permits. Usually about 3-4 hours pass before I can get back to the tank and about 12 hours overnight.

The silver-tip hasn't died yet but I doubt it'll survive the night. I will put in the coral and continue with the baking soda.

In addition to the dying silver-tip tetra, there is another silver-tip tetra. There are also an ex-ray and neon tetras and an albino and an emerald green cory. Both of the cories are very small but particularly the emerald green one. He's the only one left from the first group of fish we put in the tank.

Thanks to all of you for replying and helping with my problems.
 
Let's hope there are no more deaths. I think this forum is the best possible place on the internets to look for advice on this kind of thing, so I reckon things will turn out OK if you keep posting updates and learning. Just hang in there. Keeping an aquarium isn't going to be this much trouble in the long run, I promise. :)
 
mr bliss' recommendations might represent a bit of an increase in the amount of baking soda getting into the tank within a given time period, so I'd maybe calculate out and if that's the case, be sure you are getting that greater amount of it into the tank since its continuing to be so acidic that that's what might be killing the fish.
 
The silver-tip died. Do you know what the fuzzy/hairy stuff around his mouth means? It was getting larger--like a white/gray beard and mustache.

I did a 30% water change to make it easier on me to scatter the coral around the tank (seemed better than a bag with holes too large to hold the crushed coral). This perked up the emerald green cory a bit (he always perks up with a water change)...but not as much as I'd hoped. 10 minutes after doing this, the pH test water was tinged a very slight greenish color so probably approaching 5.5 or so. I added 3/4 t. baking soda. I will have to add more later.
 
The pH is now at 6.5. I really anticipate it dropping overnight so my DSD said she would add 1/8 t. in about 3 hours. Hopefully, it will remain rather stable until I can check it in the morning. The albino cory still looks very bad--eyes aren't as bright, can't really see any movement. The emerald green cory's eyes look attentive but he's not moving around. The 3 tetras are all together...kind of huddling, just looking at me.
 
The fuzzy stuff around his mouth was probably a fungus infection, probably from the weakening of doing a fish-in cycle in the acidic water.

The mesh bag to hold the crushed coral was so that you can remove it later if the situation changes. Not a big deal since gravel is cheap and in that situation you could now just handle it by replacing all the gravel. Probably with your water you will never have to do that!

Sorry about your fish, certainly hope things will get better. What is your substrate by the way? There's no chance that the gravel or any other things in there were just totally weird is there? This is just such an extreme case.

~~waterdrop~~
 
Awww, so sorry to hear that your fish aren't doing too well :(
We had the same situation. Got fish too fast, and after I did some research and saw that this was a mistake, I did water changes every single day, but in the end, the poor fish just couldn't handle it and 1 by 1, they all eventually died :(

I really hope your little fish pull through though
 
Now, our emerald green cory has the fuzzy stuff around his mouth. What to do? What to do? He's our favorite. My son is especially attached to him.

The tap water tests:

Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Total Hardness 150 gh/ppm
Total Chlorine 0
Total Alkalinity 80 kh/ppm
pH 7

The water in the tank this morning (didn't do all the tests):

Ammonia between .25 and .50
pH 6.2 (a drop from 6.6 last night in spite of adding 1/4 tsp. baking soda around midnight)

The gravel is what I purchased at PetCo...the same stuff they use in their tanks. The fake ornaments were purchased at PetCo. They've been removed, one by one and tested in tap water--no change. I returned them to the tank. The java fern was purchased at PetSmart. I did the same--it's back in the tank. The heater was purchased at PetCo. The bubbler was recently purchased at PetCo. The food was purchased at PetCo. The undergravel filter came with the tank--sealed, unopened, unused. The tank was used but thoroughly cleaned with water and white vinegar, sun-dried, thoroughly rinsed before setting up.

The fish guy at PetCo called me this morning. (I was surprised--I didn't even speak with him yesterday when I went to PetCo to return the filter and buy the coral!) He wanted to know how things were and asked me to check the pH. He had a customer come in so he said he'll call me back.

 
Some of us are trying to review your thread again, maybe something will turn up.

Remind me again if you've been able to do more than one water change on any of the recent days?
 

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