o0Faraz0o

I did a tank clean up yesterday and did everything by the rule but my Livebearers have been acting differently so I started to test everything. ever things good except the pH lvl its green to the blue side meaning its 8 ph and high. This is my first time that i have take the pH down and i lost the box that my kit came with so im not sure how much of the pH down powder I am ment to put in to reduce it back to pH 7 can someone help plz oh and its a 20 gallon tank.

susitna-flower

DON"T mess with the PH!!! If you didn't do anything else than clean the tank, and change some water it isn't the ph that is the problem.

What are the readings for
Ammonia:
Nitrite:
Nitrate:

Your tank is probably going through a mini cycle, if you cleaned the tank to vigorously. Exactly what did you do?

My suggestion is to do another 25% water change and do tests again tomorrow (today for you).

Do you have chlorine in the water you put in your tank? What conditioner do you use? Hopefully we can help you straighten this out before your fish suffer too much.

o0Faraz0o

the readings for
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

i put the fish and there old water into a big bucket and used a air pump to keep the oxgyen i put all the plants and decor in to the bucket with them. i took out the gravel and washed them to get ride of the left over wastes gave the tank a clean (this is done all with water nothing else) then i put everything back execpt the fish and waited for the water temp to go back to 26C. the water i used had been up away for no less than 3 days. and i still put in some water conditioner.

my umm red tail shark, dwarf gourami and pleco are all acting normally its just my livebearers that are acting strange. there not as active and tend to stay on the water surface.

oh and my water conditioner is "Aqua One" and its liquid

sirdarksol

No need to take the gravel out, just vacuum it when doing water changes. A full water change can send fish into shock. Much better to do smaller water changes more frequently. (50% every week is considered to be good).

I'm having problems following the rest of the post. I read a novel today and the lack of capitalization is hurting my already burning eyes.

jsalemi

Not to mention that much of the bio-filtering bacteria live in the gravel, so taking it out and washing it may have killed off a good portion of them. Keep a close eye on your chemistry (especially ammonia and nitrites) to make sure your tank hasn't gone into a mini-cycle (let alone a full-blown cycle).

pistorta

Unfortunately, pH is a difficult thing to modify depending on your carbonate hardness. It does not sound to me that anything you did could have affected it unless you removed decaying plants. The high pH may have originated with your tap water. However, on that note, I would advise against using phosphate based pH buffer solutions as they are short-term fixes and often cause unwanted pH swings and algae problems. Your livebearers should be fine with a steady pH in the range you specified and I would do no more than 10-25% weekly water changes in the future if your water supply has fluctuating pH levels.

sirdarksol

Pistorta is right. pH Down is a product that will send your pH on a rollercoaster ride. Peat or RO seem to be the only two long-term ways to modify it.

susitna-flower

I am curious as to why you did such a radical tank cleaning. As far as I know that isn't in the , unless you have some dreaded disease or something.

How long has your tank been running? It is really strange that all the tests came out 0. That indicates that the cycle has either never happened, or was grossly upset! You will likely soon be experiencing, as jaslemi said a full blown cycle, which will REALLY be hard on your fish. Keep testing, when the ammonia starts going up do 25-50% water changes every day.....Keep on top of it until the Ammonia and Nitrites go back down to 0 and the Nitrates go up to 5-10. Until then your tank is in the cycle and can be toxic to your fish.

Any other tank cleaning should be limited to vacuuming the gravel, and swishing the filter in discarded tank water once a week. You don't even want to change a filter unless you "seed" it next to the old filter first!

sirdarksol

I know that when I tried fishkeeping several years ago, I thought that breaking the tank down and fully cleaning it was good for the fish. I knew nothing about the nitrogen cycle. I just thought that a buildup of dirty stuff was bad.

COBettaCouple

Same here. Then I found Fishlore and .

Faraz - you might want to look for the API gH/kH test kit to test your hardness levels since your pH is looking like an issue. We just ordered one tonight for our cichlid tank and it's the cheapest individual test kit that I've seen. Under $6 US.

o0Faraz0o

well just as something that came to me like hey my fish will be much happier if 3 months worth of left over filth that was right down there would be gone. and i never cleaned the media i was a bit to smart to do that. well the mini cycle ended today the water was back to normal from being all foggy and the fish survived thankfully i have tested it 3 times for the last few days everything seems kool and even the pH has got back to 7. all my fish are acting normal again except my platys the baby's which r like less than a inch keep on biting them i don't get why. Never seen this behaviour before.

Off this topic umm i have notice my bristlenose peco's tummy seems to have grown
she is only like 1 and half inch and im pretty **** sure shes a female she doesn't have a single bristle on here face. but i dont think she at breeding age ye im not sure whats up.