Think I Need To Tear Down My New 55g, Toxic Gravel?

I've had the tank running for 2.5 weeks. I used some lava rock and pea pebbles from home depot after rinsing to build the height in my scape and topped with eco complete. I had a little bit of cycled media I added to the filter and ammonia,nitrite,nitrate has been at 0
PH is about 7.4.

My 4 platies swam around and looked happy the first 4-5 days then one by one started isolating them selves and staying at the bottom of the tank, they also started swimming 'drunk' and I watched one get tossed around by the current and swam hard into a rock.

I lost 3 of them now and 1 had babies that lasted about a week in the tank.

This wasn't making sense so I decided to test some of the left over 'viogro pea pebbles' by submerging them in a cup of muratic acid. The first couple I saw no reaction then one started bubbling a lot.

The PH does seem a little higher 7.4 vs 7 but i'm still not sure if that's the whole story.

Do I need to remove and rinse everything? or just remove the pea pebbles and surrounding substrate?

 

What does it mean when it started bubbling?

Isn't that just a reaction with something the rock is composed of? I don't understand why that's a bad thing.

 

If the rock produced bubbles when placed in the acid it means that the rock is basic. It will slowly raise the pH of your water. It is likely that your platys were shocked by the sudden jump in pH. I think your best bet would be to remove the rocks that fizzed and do small water changes on the aquarium to slowly bring your pH back down to the pH of your tap water.

 

What are your ammonia and nitrite levels? I see potential issues there since the tank wasn't running long, at least if you didn't use seeded media

 

What does it mean when it started bubbling?

Isn't that just a reaction with something the rock is composed of? I don't understand why that's a bad thing.

It's showing that it will alter the water chemistry, not sure if its only limited to PH either.

If the rock produced bubbles when placed in the acid it means that the rock is basic. It will slowly raise the pH of your water. It is likely that your platys were shocked by the sudden jump in pH. I think your best bet would be to remove the rocks that fizzed and do small water changes on the aquarium to slowly bring your pH back down to the pH of your tap water.

Is +.2 PH enough to do this? here is a pic of tank vs tap water both high and low ph tests.
seems like a slight difference to me

What are your ammonia and nitrite levels? I see potential issues there since the tank wasn't running long, at least if you didn't use seeded media

Zero, as posted above started with cycled media.

 

0.2 pH isn't enough to shock them.
So sorry I didn't read your first post carefully.
Honestly a lot of people use those petals, but the reaction of your fish does look like some sort of poisoning, potentially heavy metals.
Do you have snails in any other tanks? And are those doing fine?

 

0.2 pH isn't enough to shock them.
So sorry I didn't read your first post carefully.
Honestly a lot of people use those petals, but the reaction of your fish does look like some sort of poisoning, potentially heavy metals.
Do you have snails in any other tanks? And are those doing fine?

I have heavily stocked 10 and 5 gallon, no issues. I put some cycled media in the 5 and only saw nitrates. There's shrimp and snails and I was happy to see a baby ghost shrimp last night (mother dumped eggs 2 weeks ago and I never saw any)

I also tested GH/KH compared to tap
KH same, and GH was 5 vs 4 tap. Not a big difference there either, I'll be getting a TDS meter but i'm not sure what else I can test for to understand what the problem is.

I got the TDS meter today, Not a big difference either.

tap - 44 ppm
10g - 66 ppm
5g - 70 ppm

55g - 98 ppm

I was expecting to see some crazy high number, not really sure how bad the contamination is.

So I got annoyed and just let this tank sit for a couple months.
Bought 6 in 1 test strips that have a chlorine test and guess what.... my tank had chlorine... after sitting for 2 months after a total reset failure.
Got up the motivation to take everything out ..again..so I drained, filled, tested after 2 weeks with no sign of chlorine.
Drained again and dosed with some ammonia. Hopefully my biggest tank doesn't remain fishless for much longer.

Also I used the 6 in 1 test strips to see how much chlorine was in our tap water it was not enough to show up on the test.

 

Was it a used tank? If so, it was likely cleaned with bleach at some point, which breaks down into chlorine

 

Chlorine is not that stable, left sitting out it evaporates fairly quickly. Chloramines are a little more stable but shouldn't be able to hold on for months. I'm thinking there was something in the water causing a false positive. There are a few elements that can do that, maybe something in the gravel?

 

Was it a used tank? If so, it was likely cleaned with bleach at some point, which breaks down into chlorine

Yes it was used, I thought I did a good enough job cleaning it after leaving filled for 2 weeks to make sure it didn't leak but I guess not.

Chlorine is not that stable, left sitting out it evaporates fairly quickly. Chloramines are a little more stable but shouldn't be able to hold on for months. I'm thinking there was something in the water causing a false positive. There are a few elements that can do that, maybe something in the gravel?

I have all the rocks and substrate in buckets, will fill with water and test them for chlorine too.
For now just running it bare.

There was a little water in 1 bucket of substrate, tested it and no chlorine. I will still rinse this and will be the first I add into the tank today.
I dosed the tank earlier in the week to around 5ppm ammonia and yesterday I confirmed the filter still has good BB after seeing the nitrite disappear and was now showing nitrates.
Added 1 guppy fry this morning and will probably add my 6 praecox rainbows that have been in 10G quarantine for past month.