do you have driftwood in the tank...? maybe it's rotting...
hmm... i've heard of airstones raising the PH of tanks... i've actually done that a couple of times... i would leave a 5g bucket with two airstones in my fish room... the next day the PH was up to 8.1 and it was filtered unchlorinated water... it went up ten points from 7.1... that's a huge change over night... what kind of airation do you have right now besides the biowheels...???
I have the two pieces u see in my profile pic (the recent pic)... as far as aeration, my biowheel cascades water into my tank and I have two aquaclear 20 powerheads with the venturi air feature on full blast, there is a lot of aeration in the tank. the both point upwards to the surface, to stir the surface better. i have tons of bubbles throughout the main water column. shouldnt the wood absorb the acidity?
the wood lowers PH by leaking tannins into the water... you could boil the water a couple of times to get rid of the acid... i usually boil the wood a good 10 times...
sounds like you are doing all you could... i still recomend the salts... also treat the fish if possible... a low dose of melafix wouldn't hurt either... just take out the carbon...
which aquarium salts do u recommend and how much for a 20 gal? the wood i got straight from a populated tank at the lfs, so im sure they treated it before using it for one of their showcase tanks. But if u suggest boiling it further to help raise my ph i might just try it.
sorry for the late reply... i just finished installing PS CS3...
i would do the recomended dosage on the salt... get the cheap brand... um... API i think... i don't have any near me, but yeah... i think it's a tablespoon per 10 gallons... don't use iodine table salt... although, it isn't bad a tablespoon would be deadly... you could use pickling salt or canning salt too... but in LA it's hard to get sometimes...
if you want to try to raise the PH yourself you could use sodium bycarbonate (baking soda)... a table spoon per 10g or so... but you must be ready with a tester... i use 1-2 table spoons per 5g for my lake tanganyika tank... it raises it to about 8.8ph...
You can use organic or straight sea salt from the grocery store, and I would be careful. Too much can kill some fish like plecos. I'm thinking about how when you put in your powerheads and it brought up so much guck, the fact that your pH drops so quickly after a water change, and that without excess food the fish wouldn't be putting out that much waste, I'm thinking that the problem is that you have been feeding too much. I know you stopped for a few days, but over time if you feed too much you are filling up the gravel with detritus and fish poop. Even though you stopped feeding for a couple days there was already too much decaying poop in the gravel. Fish are always begging for food and will over eat if you let them. They say not to feed more than can be eaten in a few minutes, but this is often still way too much. I think you need to feed much less from now on. I would take out the fish, put them in a container, and completely clean the tank. Take out the water, the gravel, and clean it in the sink with tap water(you probably don't have any live bacteria in it so it won't matter about the chlorine, and start over, You have to get whatever is rotting out of there. Then set it all up again, put conditioner in, wait a few minutes and add Cycle. A little salt will help the slime coat on the fish. Then pour some of the water from the container into the tank and some of the tank water into the container so the fish can adjust to the difference. Do this a few times over a couple of hour to be safe and use an air stone for oxygen and then put them back in. Then be very frugal about feeding and I can't see why it shouldn't go fine from then on.
This is odd, i actually don't overfeed my fish... it is rare for a flake to make it to the bottom, and a small one at that. Plus i did a really good gravel vacuum the last two times, my gravel is sparkling clean from what i can see from the top and the sides of the tank. There might be a small chance that in the small areas on the sides where the ug filter doesnt extend to (as its a bit smaller than the dimensions of the aquarium) that the gravel there is holding some waste, but it cant be much, as i did clean it and its in the edges where much waste doesnt end up. Hmmm... i read somewhere online that powerheads can actually decrease ph since the fast current created from them doesnt allow much bio filter to establish in the substrate... this was only one theory, so I don't rely on that to explain my low ph. But yeah, the low ph has made my ammonia much less toxic as other sites have pointed out, explains why my fish lasted through the rough stages of high ammonia, and explains why my nitrates haven't built up. My understanding also is that aeration will help higher the ph? and if thats so, then why doesnt my ph rise with both powerheads venturi on full blast seem to help, i doubt any freshwater tanks have this much aeration. And they output smaller bubbles and more bubbles than air stones, which is better right? very baffling.
Oh, and one of my bala's was dead this morning as i predicted. The other fish seem to be bouncing back though, we'll see if they last this out. Can putting in excessive amounts of amquel and novaqua maybe cause the ph issues... cuz i did put in a very very healthy dose of both with my water changes.... but then i would imagine it to stabilize after a few days... what u think?
this is why i try to talk people out of undergravel filters... under the bottom frame of the filter plate there's always a huge buildup of gunk and rotting matter... sure they work great for a couple of months, but that stuff just builds up...
sponge filters > UGF... you're having PH problems because of the amonia spikes and unstable water changes...
i concur with pete... take the fish out... clean out the tank completly... and get some biospirra... and sans the under gravel filters... get two sponge filters and put the powerheads on them instead...
well i could be wrong but intuitively the UG filter makes sense if you attached two powerheads to the risers as I have done (and per the advice of peter), since the strong currents leave no chance of buildup underneath the filter, and since the substrate now becomes a giant biological filter. There is definitely the great debate on whether to use UG's or not, but I think most people will agree a well maintained UG adds more filtration to the tank. Problem is... am i maintaining MINE correctly!!? lolol
We'll see... ill post another water test in a couple of days. I'm pretty sure my cycle has mini-restarted, so don't want to do a water change unless my ammonia spikes too high.
stocked, right now have two angelfish and a bala shark and a pleco... i thought about adding cycle, but the last time i added cycle my fish started stressing out, so im hesitant. plus im reading mixed reviews on cycle...
and as for washing the biowheels it was a momentary lapse in judgment, i knew not to do that, but my tank was stinking so badly and when i went to clean my filter i smelled everything and quickly ran it under water before realizing what i was doing, lol. Wont be doing that mistake ever again. But yeah, how bout amquel to reduce the effect of the ammonia... oh, and my really low ph of 6 is actually turning my ammonia into ammonium which is much less lethal than ammonia. dont ask me how that works, i looked it up, lol.
good news my friends... after my latest (and very extensive) water change and gravel vac, my water test revealed low ammonia and a stable 6.8 ph... i believe my next test results should show nitrites and then nitrates. Everything looks clear and my fish haven't looked this happy in a few weeks. I'll keep up the update. oh, and no smell either. My two guesses as to the recurring low ph and the smell, was either a missed area where something had rotted in the gravel (as many suggested), or my driftwood which has a big hole in it (and i mean big)... when i went to remove it to do the proper cleaning a huge bubble surfaced that was hiding underneath the water and in this hole... maybe it had held a great amount of co2 and smell, who knows. But now its gone and i keep the driftwood the other way up. Either way, my aquarium has stabilized. Thanks for the feedback everyone, this has been a long thread and I have really really understood my aquarium through this hardship.
