PH problem

[schwenz]

First of all, hello. I'm sorry to enter the forums with a question, but I'm guessing a lot of members are introduced in this fashion

I have a newish tank, 30gallon that I picked up in a flea market. I read up on a bunch of forums and took my time getting everything up to snuff. To get the tank cycling I picked up some danios and let them swim around in there for a while. For a few weeks I had a nice little school of happy danios. Then I picked up three platties from a petstore (a petstore that I now sneer at when I drive by it) and introduced some sort of mutant parasite into my tank. Basically the parasite killed off all my poor fishies, comsuming them one by one.

During the genocide of my fish I tried treating the water with Jungle Clear, which is a dissolving parasite medicine.

Anyway, now I've been refreshing the water with regular changes in my very expensive plastic plant display and did another two full doses of the Jungle Clear to make sure that all the parasites that may have hung around in the water are good and dead.

The problem NOW is I cant get the PH in the water to return to a normal level. I must have dumped a half cup of PH Down into that tank, but I keep getting a blue reading on the tester card. Is it possible there is something wrong with my PH tester? Or is it that the PH somehow got so high that it just hasn't dropped below 7.6 yet? I've really put a lot of PH DOWN in there, the bottle suggests half a teaspoon for every 20 gallons.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[wetwetwet]

HiYa and welcome schwenz

Have you read any of the articals on 'cycling'?....where you testing for ammonia and nitrte - deaths could be due to this - personally I favour fishless cycling (but each to his own)...

What pH are you starting with? - imho opinion its not a good idea to try and adjust the chemistry of your local water especially for newcomers - by far a better idea to get fish that suit your water.... - much easier in the long run

pH fluctuations can be exteemly stressfull on your fish and I have never heard many encourageing reports about using adjusters - I'm sure some of the chemistry minded ppl in here can explain

 

[Alien Anna]

Hi and welcome to the forum,
reading your catalogue of disasters I suspect the basic problem is misinformation from your Local Fish Shop and misunderstandings about what was likely happening.

Please read my pinned article on "New Tank Syndrome" (the link's in my sig) and make sure you understand about "cycling" a tank. I strongly suspect your fish died because the tank wasn't properly cycled and you got an ammonia and nitrite spike.

I suspect the pH was a complete red-herring - adjusting pH causes more fish deaths IMHO than inappropriate pH ever did. I know experienced fish keepers who've even bred fish at pH's the books say the fish shouldn't even survive in!

All that pH Down products do is fill your water with phosphates and cause a trampoline-like effect of your pH. An unstable pH is just about as bad as it can get for a fish, particularly in an improperly cycled tank. The phosphates in those chemicals merely encourage the growth of algae and mess up your water chemistry. The first thing you should do is get that stuff out of your water!

The parasites were probably ich, which is always present in fish but doesn't usually come out unless the fish are stressed (which they almost certainly were). You did the right thing to treat the tank but next time you get fish it is better to prevent such problems, rather than having to treat them afterwards.

I'm glad you haven't give up entirely on the idea of having fish. This time you need to start by cycling your tank and then, when it has built up the beneficial bacteria to break down fish waste harmlessly, you can add new fish. With the right advice and information, it should go very smoothly, so don't despair, but do read the pinned articles in the "Beginner" section of this site.