Pretty sure I just almost killed my fish!

Well I've been gathering some supplies to start injecting co2 to my 20 gallon tank. I borrowed a co2 tank from my brother and just got it filled. It has a solenoid and I was just dropping an air stone in the tank to check it out and play with the co2 levels. well holy barely opened and it was like a co2 volcano in my tank. Took me a minute to get the pressure down to a reasonable level and then I noticed my Gourami and tetras hovering at the top of the tank. I thought maybe it was because they thought it was feeding time but they mostly ignored the food. I grabbed my trusty API test kit and KH kit and tested PH/KH. It was at a KH of 8 and PH of 8.2 yesterday (been slowly bringing my KH down from 16.75 through water changes with RO water) Well after my co2 test the PH dropped to 6.2!!!! Holy you know what!

Luckily I had some water for resting in the basement for my change tomorrow so I grabbed it up and started draining filling testing, draining filling testing....I got it back to somewhat reasonable levels and the fish are swimming around normally now. Whew...that scared the bejesus out of me!

 

omg. good save

 

Wow...

 

Yes it was a bit of a scare but everyone is looking good still. Now i've got to find the proper balance and I'll be golden!

 

It's so scary when stuff like that happens in fish keeping I've had my share. Good catch Soarl I'm sure you'll figure it out

 

Do you have a drop checker? A little chamber where the bubble goes through water or glycerin? If so, you should start with around one bubble per second Glad your fish are okay!

 

no drop checker...just monitoring my ph levels for the time being. That's all the drop checkers do as well isn't it?

 

Wow! Lucky.. A question this has scared me! Lol I've just added an air pump light into mine and It started to fizz the tank and not bubble at all! Since my fish have been backed up the top corner, I'm not sure if there scared because I brought them today and the move may have shocked them but I got the air pump from my other tank to add to my newer tank, could this be the reason? I'm worried now haha

Well done on the life saving act ;-)

 

You're just talking about an airstone, soarl is talking about injected CO2. Nothing to worry about with an airstone.