New guy with major problems!!!

[Pure]

Trying to drop the PH in a tank that large with a PH that high isn't going to be an easy task. Peat is pretty useless when your KH is super high. Plants also won't do squat for dropping PH. Really your best bet is to get an RO unit. You can find pretty nice ones offa Ebay. Mine makes 100 gals a day (this is always figured in 24 hrs) and the the entire kit only set me back like 70 bucks.

My guess about the neons would be your acclimation. Make it a point to ask the pet shop what their PH is. If it is around 7.0 you need to acclimate them over the course of a couple of hrs to a PH as high as yours.

Another thing to try. For a wile I was having similar issues with rummy nose tetras. No matter what I tried I just couldn't get but maybe a 3rd of the ones I would buy to live for more than a week. This was until a friend told me about what to feed new smaller tetras. Frozen baby brine shrimp ever day for 2 weeks, then gradually cutting them off until they started eating the pellet food I feed my discus. This worked very well. I did this for the next couple of batches of them and none of them have died yet. (knock on wood)

 

[Freakazoid!]

Down to five now. I had to scoop one of the neons out on Sunday, so I thought that I would be at six, but this morning and this afternoon, I can only find five. There are only a few plants to hide things, so I am pretty sure am I missing one. This is really starting to frustrate me. It doesn't make sense. I added some copper power green to try and help. The LFS can't figure anything out either. I really want ot restock the tank, but I won't do it until I find a smoking gun.

 

[Seleya]

I would strongly suspect your gravel. If your well water is coming out of the tap at 7.0 and your tank is over 8, something is causing that to happen. Have you tried keeping a glass of water out overnight and test it 12 - 24 hours later? If the water is still 7.0 at that point, your gravel or something else in the tank is the reason why. pH stress can be a killer, especially for something as sensitive as neons.

What did you keep in the tank previously?

 

[Freakazoid!]

I started the tank originally with a widespread community that my wife mostly stocked. In fact, she pretty much took over what was going to be my toy, and she put just about everything in there, and I eventually gave up. This time, I told her that I wanted to do a sort of Amazon model, and she needs to keep her hands off.

She liked the idea. But now I have to buy her a tank for her own. We are planning to find an identical tank and place them side by side, but on one stand with one canopy/cover. But I will not commit to anything until I can solve this water problem. I will try the overnight test with the tap water.

Neon population: 5, and steady.

 

[Freakazoid!]

I think I finally figured it out. 5 or 6 days before I had the original problem, my wife picked up some real peat moss for me. I had been using the Fluval granules, but thought I would give the real stuff a whirl. She called from the store because she didn't know which to buy. I looked up a few different threads, and we decided to get the sphagnum stuff.

I was moving stuff around in the garage today, and I took a closer look at the bag of peat, and it said "enriched" on it. On the back, it listed the enriched nutrients. The first one said "Ammonium Phosphate" - which leads me to believe that I flat out poisoned my fish!

At the very least, I think I have found a smoking gun, as well as a source of all the phosphates.