# Water chemistry problems, need advice asap



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

This is about my sisters fishtank, she said she'd register and post but hasn't yet so I will post.

She bought a 10g aqueon kit from the lsf, new gravel, plants, and filter. She set it up and got starter fish, everthing was ok till the got a fungus then died. 

The issue now; She has completely cleaned the tank and everything in it twice now and both times her water tests at home with the liquid kit and at the lfs with the strips are horrible. They read way higher then the tests even go. We have asked several of the employees which are knowledgable in aquariums and they are all stumped. Even water changes aren't imporving anything. After her fish died this last time she just let it run for a month and the results were even worse. They lfs gave her 6 goldfish to try, 3 tied within 24hrs another the day after. She is about to give up if we can't find the problem. I have had tanks the same time as hers and my water was fine.

I am thinking about suggesting to the lfs to set it up and see if it happens to them lol. Maybe if it does they can try and test each element and find out if something was defective when she bought it?

Thanks for reading, we are headed back to the lfs to test her and our sink water again and talk to the manager, he is the last person the other suggested would know anything.


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

First off, strips are well known for inaccuracy. Second, when you say way off what readings are you referring to? I don't use strips and don't know all it takes readings on and even then, some are different.

Can you post readings for ammonia, nitrite (if there is any), and nitrate. What ph is the tank and has it remained stable throughout? Has she tested her water straight out of the tap for the same?


----------



## Amie (Sep 15, 2010)

Also, have you tested the water directly from the tap? If not, you should do that and if so what were the results? And, what did she clean the tank with? And, what kinds of things are in the tank. For example, is it all aquarium gravel and aquarium plants or are there decoration added from the house or driftwood or maybe rocks from the backyard.


----------



## slurik (Dec 19, 2010)

First off, A new tank takes at least 3 weeks to fully cycle without outside influence..... Only ever tear down a tank for cleaning for things like Fish TB (Mycobacteriosis).

After this, I must then:
Agree x 2
- Strips are inaccurate
- Know what comes from the tap!

Its uncommon to hear about tap water not being able to sustain freshwater fish these days, however not unheard of. Generally people who encounter this issue have 1 of 2 problems going on, they are either connected to a private well system, in which case your water from the tap could be coming out in just about any chemical cocktail, or they are using an incomplete water conditioner for their needs. 

If you have a well, you simply may have chemicals in levels intolerable to freshwater fish, or chemicals in the water utterly intolerable to fish, you will need to have this properly tested. (bottled water is a solution to this)

If you are on municipally supplied water, there are good chances your water conditioning is incomplete. There are 4 factors to address when conditioning your water, Chlorine, Chloramines, Ammonia, and Heavy Metals. The bad news is not every conditioner addresses all 4 factors. Ensure you use one which does, as chloramines will not readily evapourate from your water the way which chlorine will, and when the molecular bonds of chloramine are broken, they leave behind ammonia/ammonium. Aqua Plus is the only conditioner i ever really had experience using since it was so effective, and being a complete conditioner is the only one i may reccomend, however there are many, simply be sure its a complete conditioner.

And dont change more than 3 gallons of water at a time out of a 10 gallon tank, you will strip the beneficial microbes out and will be starting from worse than new, instead of having a sterile tank, you have a tank full of decaying dead bacteria, which will produce ammonia/ammonium (based on pH) spikes. Dont change your filters cartridge on the same day as a water change for the same reasons.

Hope this helps.

Good reads: 

New Tank Syndrome (New tanks and tanks with too much water changed)

Aquarium (and Pond) Answers: Aquarium Water Conditioners

Fish Tuberculosis by Leslie Keefer <<only time except moving you should need to tear a tank down

Edit: Strips also have a miserable shelf life that is often overlooked, since they are dry, they can often remain on the shelf in the store for a long time. There is a date printed on the bottom of the bottle to tell you when they will lose their ability to properly analyze your water, usually they're good for about 2 years after manufacturing. Beyond this, as noted above the phial/drip tests are far far more accurate however you need good white light and a good eye.


----------



## NeonShark666 (Dec 13, 2010)

You need to find out if you have a bad tank or bad tap water. The simplest way to do thia is to set up another 10G tank and test your water after a few days. If the water tests are the same as your old tank then you have bad tap water. If your new tank is normal then your old tank is bad. Your strips may also be contaminated. You can check that by testing some aeriated distilled water with your strips. With distilled water, most of your readings should be near zero and your ph should be around 6.2. If you think your drinking water is contaminated then stop drinking it and tell your water utulity about the problem. Readings off the scale usually mean some kind of contamination is involved.


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

Thanks, for the replies. We are going to the petstore in a few hours to retest the tank water and the tap water. They do use the strips, but that will atleast tell us if its the tap. Will check the conditioner also. Everything in her tank is store bought nothing from outside or around the house. The only reason she tore it down and cleaned it was because it had just sat there for a few months with the water in it and it was kinda dirty, she didn't clean it before she stoped taking care of it. This last time she used hot water and vinager.
BTW, where can you buy the glass test tubes? We have the liquid kit but most of the tubes have been broken.

Thanks will reply again when we get back from the petstore


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Some strips don't test for ammonia. Her lfs doesn't have a clue and I wouldn't trust anything they say. Why they would give her six goldfish for her little tank makes no sense. Testing with strips and/or letting them conduct the testing is just going to rack your brain. At least get an ammonia liquid test kit and test your water.


----------



## Amie (Sep 15, 2010)

You can probably order the tubes alone from ebay. But you might be able to get the whole test kit for 20 or 30 dollars at the store anyway. You said she cleaned with only vinegar and water right? Are you sure she rinsed and rinsed and rinsed it some more to make sure all the vinegar was out?


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

didn't make it to the petstore afterall. The water conditioner does treat all 4 things. She's to lazy to do one test at a time so tonight after she goes to bed I'll test it with our liquid kit lol. The goldfish were just for cycling they said bring em back when its cycled. One more died earlier, I feel bad leaving the last survivor in there. I assume she rinsed all the vinager out, she and our mom washed everything a ton. Oh forgot to mention that everything is meant for aquariums and just plastic plants and gravel. Could not letting the vinager dry cause it? Not sure if she let it dry first before filling it up.


----------



## PolymerTim (Sep 22, 2009)

GypsyV said:


> didn't make it to the petstore afterall. The water conditioner does treat all 4 things. She's to lazy to do one test at a time so tonight after she goes to bed I'll test it with our liquid kit lol. The goldfish were just for cycling they said bring em back when its cycled. One more died earlier, I feel bad leaving the last survivor in there. I assume she rinsed all the vinager out, she and our mom washed everything a ton. Oh forgot to mention that everything is meant for aquariums and just plastic plants and gravel. Could not letting the vinager dry cause it? Not sure if she let it dry first before filling it up.


I've got to agree with jrman on this one, your lfs doesn't have a clue and I wouldn't trust them for any more advice. I've been to several different lfs and I've never seen them use strips for testing (even though they sell them).

I'm not sure where you can buy the tubes only, but you also get them with the individual kits like GH or KH, which is how I got a few extra.

As for cycling the tank with fish, this is often done, but its ridiculous to try it with 6 goldfish in a 10 gallon. If you are going to use fish to cycle the tank (there are fishless methods I prefer) you would want a single, small fish that produces little waste. Goldfish produce much more waste than most small tropicals. Most likely, there was a huge ammonia spike from decomposing fish waste that killed off most of the goldfish. Even if they don't die from such water conditions, it makes them much more susceptible to diseases and fungus.

So, if I understand correctly, you still have one goldfish in the tank. Certainly test for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate as soon as you can to understand better what is going on, but even before that, I would recommend doing a partial water change. It is unlikely (although possible as others have mentioned) that your tap water is worse than the tank water and this is the quickest way to reduce the toxins in your tank. I'm still new at this, but I would probably be changing 50% of the water every day unless I had testing results to show that my water was safe.

Best of luck to you. I hope you are able to help your sister out.


----------



## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

+1 six goldfish in a 10 gallon is just crazy!!! That one was doomed to fail. If it was the LFS that recommended it don't take their advice for anything! 

I think the chances are the problems your sister is having are quite normal. It would help to know what you have been testing for. High ammonia is to be expected in a new tank and it does kill fish. A high ph could be caused by some thing in the tank decor. If that is the case it shouldn't be too hard to work out what's causing it. It's a good idea to test your tap water too. If you tell us something more about your results we'll be able to give better answers.

Even one goldfish in 10 gallon tank won't work. You can let the tank finish cycling and then return the fish (if it's still alive) or return it now. I'd recommend returning it now and doing a fishless cycle. That way things should go smoothly and no more fish will die. Don't forget a 10 gallon isn't very big so the fish have to be chosen with care. If it is overstocked you can expect constant problems.


----------



## mfgann (Oct 21, 2010)

Her tank is cycling, which means beneficial bacteria colonies need to develop before you can safely add fish. My LFS (Petsmart) uses strips too, so I invested in a freshwater master test kit. If you can convince your parents to get one, it would be a big step up.

I would highly recommend she try a fishless cycle, if she loses the last goldfish. Cycling the tank should take 3-6 weeks. If you use a liquid test kit, at the end of cycling you will test 0 ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrite, and some level of nitrate built up. 

The simplest fishless cycle is just to drop a flake of fishfood in the tank every day. With no fish it will rot, and still produce the ammonia that the tank needs to cycle. Once the tank is cycled, only add one fish per week until you have no more than 1" of fish per gallon. Be very careful you read about how big fish grow, as the petstore will happily sell you a fish that will grow 2 feet long for your 10 gallon tank.

Good luck.


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

Sorry I'm slow at testing the water. I tested our tap with the master test kit, the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates where 0, our ph is 7.8. The petstore used the strips today and got almost the same results on the tap. I was checking to see if their strips were accurate. Like I said my sister refuses to test her water herself so again I will sneak and test it after she falls asleep lol. Still just the one goldfish, if we take it out do we still need to "feed" the bacteria with food? 

Test results coming in a few hours.


----------



## PolymerTim (Sep 22, 2009)

GypsyV said:


> Sorry I'm slow at testing the water. I tested our tap with the master test kit, the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates where 0, our ph is 7.8. The petstore used the strips today and got almost the same results on the tap. I was checking to see if their strips were accurate. Like I said my sister refuses to test her water herself so again I will sneak and test it after she falls asleep lol. Still just the one goldfish, if we take it out do we still need to "feed" the bacteria with food?
> 
> Test results coming in a few hours.


Looking forward to the test results. I think it will give us a much better picture of what's going on. As for the test strips, I haven't used them, but I've heard that they get you in the ball park, but don't always detect low levels. So for instance, a liquid kit might measure 0.2 ppm ammonia while the strips would show none.

As for the final gold fish, it is either a real trooper and/or your cycle is progressing and the ammonia levels might be coming down. Now that you're down to one fish, your also reducing the amount of waste building up in the tank. As for how you proceed, you could really still go either fishless or with the goldfish you've got. If you keep with the goldfish approach, you can expect to perform very frequent water changes to keep the water from being very toxic to the fish. Alternatively, you could take the fish back now and go with the one flake a day tank feeding approach. The nice thing about that is you aren't as concerned about daily water changes and water tests (and no fish deaths).


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

Ok that would go much faster if I had more than 3 vials and 2 lids lol. The strips are wrong. My sis's camera batteries kept dying and I don't know where new batteries are to post the ones I took. They have bad lighting but you can still see the colors okay. 
PH is 6.4, our taps ph is 7.8 so it lowered in the tank. ammonia is 8.0 and getting darker, Nitrates are 5.0 and Nitrites are 0.


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

That appears normal for ph. A lot of people's ph will lower after 24hrs of coming out of the tap. If you wanted to test that theory just take some water from your tap and set aside and retest after a day.

If those values you post for your Sis' tank are liquid test results, then you got a serious problem and need to do a 50% water change ASAP. Probably will not help your issues much, so you'll probably need to do another 50% the next day. It's no wonder the tank has been killing fish. Ammonia and nitrite levels should be kept to 1 or below if at all possible when cycling. At those levels you could probably pull all the fish out and let the tank finish its cycle - no water changes. Not recommending that though.


----------



## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

That's fine for ph, ideally leave the water to sit over night before you put it in the tank but with smaller water changes it wont really make much difference.

The ammonia explains fish deaths. It is a problem but a perfectly normal problem for a tank that is still cycling or that is very over stocked. Here are a couple of threads that might help:

http://www.aquariumforum.com/f2/fishless-cycle-9364.html
http://www.aquariumforum.com/f2/nitrogen-cycle-dummies-8164.html


----------



## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

1) forget the goldfish

2) do a beaslbob build.

Water changes alone at usable levels will never maintain a tank.

the tank itself must process the nasties like ammonia and carbon dioxide or no fish will ever live in the closed environment.

The beaslbob build here is actually just using live plants to process those nasties, balance out and stabilize tank operation. this allows the fish to thrive with minimum input (effort) on the part of the operator.


my .02


----------



## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

beaslbob said:


> 1) forget the goldfish
> 
> 2) do a beaslbob build.
> 
> ...


For that to work there needs to be good lighting for the plants. I'm thinking this tank probably has a standard light that come with the tank and might not be enough.


----------



## Amie (Sep 15, 2010)

Well, if you stick with the easier plants that will help with that. I think my Wisteria would grow in anything. But, it's not that hard to just go get a better light anyway and it doesn't have to be a new canopy or anything like that. Just a simple light bulb change.


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

Tanks for the responses, I'm doing a beaslbob for my 29g but she doesn't want to. We'll retest in a day or two and post the results.


----------



## PolymerTim (Sep 22, 2009)

GypsyV said:


> Ok that would go much faster if I had more than 3 vials and 2 lids lol. The strips are wrong. My sis's camera batteries kept dying and I don't know where new batteries are to post the ones I took. They have bad lighting but you can still see the colors okay.
> PH is 6.4, our taps ph is 7.8 so it lowered in the tank. ammonia is 8.0 and getting darker, Nitrates are 5.0 and Nitrites are 0.


I just want to say is you've got one very hardy goldfish there. 

I second the immediate water change comment. I would be doing 50% per day until the ammonia was below 1 ppm if it were me.

The fact that nitrites is still zero suggests that the cycle has barely even begun. The first bacterial colony, if it exists at all, has yet to convert any measurable amounts of ammonia to nitrites. The second bacterial colony can't even get started until the first colony builds up a reasonable amount of nitrites.

If it were me, I think I would take the goldfish back and finish cycling fishless. You are probably looking at several more weeks unless you can get something from an established tank to jump start you. If you take the goldfish back, you can feed a flake of food each day to the tank and test the water once a week to see when you've cycled. You will know you've got both bacterial colonies established when ammonia and nitrites read zero and nitrates slowly build with time.


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

Nother thought I had last night.
When she starts her aquarium in a day or two it get cloudy and we and the lfs thought it needed a clarifier or whatever it is that sinks floating debris. Know I'm realizing it could have been a bacteria bloom. Could we have messed up the cycle by doing this if it was bacteria we were seeing?


----------



## Amie (Sep 15, 2010)

Absolutely. Those things should only be used in an established tank-not a new set up. Me, personally, try my best not to use anything unnatural in the tank-if the water is cloudy and you want to make it clearer skip the additives and do a water change and maybe clean the inside of the glass.You can get cleaner brushes for that at Wal Mart.


----------



## beaslbob (May 29, 2009)

After whatever initial cloudiness I get in my planted tanks I just kill the lights and stop adding food should the tank cloud up again. Usuall clears up in a couple of days.

my .02


----------



## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

Just wondering how it's going. Is the goldfish still alive?


----------



## slurik (Dec 19, 2010)

GypsyV said:


> Nother thought I had last night.
> When she starts her aquarium in a day or two it get cloudy and we and the lfs thought it needed a clarifier or whatever it is that sinks floating debris. Know I'm realizing it could have been a bacteria bloom. Could we have messed up the cycle by doing this if it was bacteria we were seeing?


A clarifier won't do the trick for you unfortunately, those products are designed to coagulate debris in the water column. When a new tank clouds, although it looks like particular debris, in fact its generally ammonia gas, and as such a clarifier will not remove it. Beyond this, in a new tank removing ammonia will hinder your tank's cycle process a whole lot, as this ammonia begins our nitrogen cycle in the tank. NH3/NH4+ > NO3- > NO2- ; take out that first step and everything falls apart. Patience young padawan! believe in the fishless cycle.


Your fish can live very, very extended periods of time without food, in the wild there is no guarantee that a fish will eat every day, as such they have a natural tendency to eat anything that they can, whenever they can to avoid this natural empty belly state, which rarely ever happens in aquaria. As this is such, be mindful about how much you feed your fish, even if they appear to continue to eat, they may already be full up. Many fish dont even have a proper stomach, just a tube where food goes in 1 end and sediment out the other. Their capacity to eat is equal to filling 1 of their eyeballs with flakes, anything else is extra, and even if eaten, will be pooped back out rather quickly.

Too much food is the only cause i've ever had in any recent times for cloudy water. (outside of new tank setups, but these don't count in my eyes)

Hope it comes together for you, cheers.


----------



## GypsyV (Nov 28, 2010)

Will test the water again tonight. The goldfish is still alive. She added API's live bacteria, not sure the name.

Okay water hasn't changed, ammonia still at 8.0 or higher and Nitrites at 0. Thats all I checked, didn't want to check nitrates if I didn't need to.


----------



## slurik (Dec 19, 2010)

With ammonia like that and no nitrite theres really no point looking for nitrates. Time and patience now will pull you through.


----------



## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Keep doing daily 50% water changes until it comes down.


----------



## PolymerTim (Sep 22, 2009)

jrman83 said:


> Keep doing daily 50% water changes until it comes down.


I strongly second this point. You've got a very hardy gold fish there, but you don't want to push your luck with it. You've got dangerously high ammonia levels. As long as there is some ammonia in the tank, you won't really be interrupting the cycle, so I would keep doing the daily water changes to try to get it down closer to 1 ppm at most.


----------



## snail (Aug 6, 2010)

^+1


----------

