Hi there,
We've been having problems in one of our two tanks (a year old 350l) for about a year now - it seems like pretty much everything we put in it dies with some kind of while fungus material, damaged fins. We've been treating almost constantly with WS3 (originally had a whitespot problem when the tank was new), moving on to eSHa 2000 about 4 months ago.
We'd had about a month looking clear so transferred the remainder of our fish over (the idea was to wind up the other small old tank) and a young clown loach was dead in under 24h, his mate is very ill - but the two young angels appear to be (touch wood) fine.
Noticed something today though - the pH in the new tank is lower than the old one - less than 6.4, the old one is more like 7.4. Never thought to check that - same water, same ornaments... but then I realised that the very first fish we put in the tank are the ones that have survived through all this - so maybe they've just been there while the water chemistry became more acidic and were able to acclimatise to it, but everything else we've been putting is has had a significant change to deal with.
Could the difference in pH explain our problems and the symptoms? How could the water chemistry be so different between the two tanks (maybe the constant treatments)? Will we need to raise the pH to keep these kinds of fish again and if so how to raise it safely with the existing population (Hoplos, Corys, Pangassius)?
Thanks for the advice,
Paul
We've been having problems in one of our two tanks (a year old 350l) for about a year now - it seems like pretty much everything we put in it dies with some kind of while fungus material, damaged fins. We've been treating almost constantly with WS3 (originally had a whitespot problem when the tank was new), moving on to eSHa 2000 about 4 months ago.
We'd had about a month looking clear so transferred the remainder of our fish over (the idea was to wind up the other small old tank) and a young clown loach was dead in under 24h, his mate is very ill - but the two young angels appear to be (touch wood) fine.
Noticed something today though - the pH in the new tank is lower than the old one - less than 6.4, the old one is more like 7.4. Never thought to check that - same water, same ornaments... but then I realised that the very first fish we put in the tank are the ones that have survived through all this - so maybe they've just been there while the water chemistry became more acidic and were able to acclimatise to it, but everything else we've been putting is has had a significant change to deal with.
Could the difference in pH explain our problems and the symptoms? How could the water chemistry be so different between the two tanks (maybe the constant treatments)? Will we need to raise the pH to keep these kinds of fish again and if so how to raise it safely with the existing population (Hoplos, Corys, Pangassius)?
Thanks for the advice,
Paul
