death after water change
- Thread starter exhumed07
- Start date
sorry about the delay in posts. been fixing my pc lately. but as far as the water changes go i do a 50% every week to 2 weeks. but once a month i drain all my tanks down and rinse out all my filter housings and do a good clean of filter media. i noticed after a while of filling my planted 55 the hose was kinked and had a fog of small bubbles coming out of it instead of the large bubbles that normally come out of the hose. thats the only variable i can think of between all my other tanks cause my planted tank is the only one that had the bubble issues. none of my other tanks had bubbles on the glass to that concentration or bubbles on the deco or on the fish. it was only this one tank and the kink and bubbles are the only variables i can think of.
I've read all the posts but I'm still skeptical about 'micro-bubbles' causing the death - if that was the case it would be a common occurrence and aquarist forums would be full of info on it.
It sounds like you get your water from a well - I'd be looking at toxins in the watertable that can't be detected by regular means... I will admit to being something of a 'conspiracy theorist' so I have to ask, is there any fracking going on nearby? Well water used to be the safest option but in this day & age it's something of a gamble.
It sounds like you get your water from a well - I'd be looking at toxins in the watertable that can't be detected by regular means... I will admit to being something of a 'conspiracy theorist' so I have to ask, is there any fracking going on nearby? Well water used to be the safest option but in this day & age it's something of a gamble.
I've tested my well water and it measures 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and around 10ppm nitrate. my planted tank registers 0 nitrate the rest of my tanks register at about 20ppm. but the symptoms i seen in my fish and they symptoms of this gas bubble thing are spot on. i'm thinking it's the fact that my well water has alot of dissolved gasses in it and once it's out of the the ground and out of the pressure tank those gasses are able to escape, but also causing problems with my fish. but like i said the only variable between that tank and the others was the hose got kinked causing a fog of bubbles in the tank.
it is a blend. the hot water is softened since it comes from the heater and the cold by passes the water softener and is straight from the well. ph on both is around 8. it's been that way since as long as i've known. it's the same in all my tanks. i've used buffers to drop it but an hour later it's back to 8. when i had my salt tank i fought it and fought it trying to get it lowered but never did succeed
the higher the KH the more buffering capacity the water has, and GH in that case is usually higher as well. GH is the amount of minerals like calcium and magnesium dissolved in the water.
in a salt tank you'd actually want a pH of more than 8 so idk why you would want to fight that. unless it wouldn't go up either lol.
but yea if there are vast GH and KH differences between that tank water at the end of a week right before a water change and the new water you are about to put in then that could do it too.
in a salt tank you'd actually want a pH of more than 8 so idk why you would want to fight that. unless it wouldn't go up either lol.
but yea if there are vast GH and KH differences between that tank water at the end of a week right before a water change and the new water you are about to put in then that could do it too.
the reason i was trying to drop the ph in the salt tank is cause it was higher then any test kit could test for. it was literally off the chart. and it's the same for my freshwater tanks. any test kit i been able to find goes up to 8.6 and it is higher then that. thats straight out of the tap and at time for a water change.
I tested the well water straight from the pressure tank by the well head itself, no softening or anything and it was maxing out the test kit. and my africans do great. and my other fish are doing good as well. my neons are spawning and so are my cories. I did another big water change when i got home. i decided to test in an empty 10 gallon tank. I kinked the hose and got that fog of gas bubbles. put a few guppies in before hand. they died with the bubbles in their tails and behaved the same way the fish that died previously did. these guppies were slated for food for my green sunfish anyway, they did not go to waste just so everyone knows. well anyway i drained the tank and filled it again without kinking the hose. almost no bubbles on the glass and no fatalities. so i drained the tank and did it again with the same guppies but kinked the hose. again tons of bubbles on the glass and freaking out guppies that died with bubbles in their tails. i'm 99% sure now that it has to do with the gasses naturally in my water. maybe when the hose is unkinked and the water outgasses easier with the big bubbles but when the hose gets kinked they are smaller bubbles and don't allow the water to outgas as fast allowing bubbles to form within the fish as a result.