Hi everyone, I've just joined the forum which I happened to stumble on during my quest to find some web advice for my little 10 gal. freshwater aquarium.
My name's Fidel, I'm a photographer and spend most of my time at home when I'm not shooting so I decided to get into aquariums and this is my first personal experience with my own freshwater aquarium.
I currently have a very basic tank with cheap lights, a tetra whisper filter, a plastic plant and my fish are as follows:
1 Male Beta
1 Panda Cory
1 Albino Cory
5 Zebra Danios
5 Neon & Cardinal Tetras.
For the past few months my fiance was taking care of the tank, she added some fish and lost some. I stayed away primarily because I'm more interested in saltwater aquariums, but I figured learning to maintain and take care of a 10 gal freshwater tank should prepare me to get into the saltwater world.
I ordered a bunch of stuff from drsfosterandsmith.com including a bottle of test strips as well as a box of filter media and some fish food.
Of course the first thing I did was testing the water chemistry, turns out it's not perfect (I'm not surprised) and according to the strip my nitrates, GH and PH are very high, Nitrates around 200, GH 300, and PH is over 8.
After hours of reading and scouring the web for decent information I guess the hardness is due to lack of water changes or not changing enough water which is true in my case. The first real water change I personally did (not sure what my fiance had been doing previously) was about 3 gallons, new water was treated with aquasafe plus then temperature matched, and this was on the first of this month.
I am not sure if the nitrate and ph is affected by the same issues and that is why I am here, of course I am not convinced I have the answer so if you're an expert on these matters please feel free to chime in or provide advice.
I do have one specific question for now; will frequent water changes sway or improve the extremes in my test strip results? if so how often is too frequent? and are 2-3 gallons per water change a good amount?
Thanks in advance and I look forward to read your responses and threads
My name's Fidel, I'm a photographer and spend most of my time at home when I'm not shooting so I decided to get into aquariums and this is my first personal experience with my own freshwater aquarium.
I currently have a very basic tank with cheap lights, a tetra whisper filter, a plastic plant and my fish are as follows:
1 Male Beta
1 Panda Cory
1 Albino Cory
5 Zebra Danios
5 Neon & Cardinal Tetras.
For the past few months my fiance was taking care of the tank, she added some fish and lost some. I stayed away primarily because I'm more interested in saltwater aquariums, but I figured learning to maintain and take care of a 10 gal freshwater tank should prepare me to get into the saltwater world.
I ordered a bunch of stuff from drsfosterandsmith.com including a bottle of test strips as well as a box of filter media and some fish food.
Of course the first thing I did was testing the water chemistry, turns out it's not perfect (I'm not surprised) and according to the strip my nitrates, GH and PH are very high, Nitrates around 200, GH 300, and PH is over 8.
After hours of reading and scouring the web for decent information I guess the hardness is due to lack of water changes or not changing enough water which is true in my case. The first real water change I personally did (not sure what my fiance had been doing previously) was about 3 gallons, new water was treated with aquasafe plus then temperature matched, and this was on the first of this month.
I am not sure if the nitrate and ph is affected by the same issues and that is why I am here, of course I am not convinced I have the answer so if you're an expert on these matters please feel free to chime in or provide advice.
I do have one specific question for now; will frequent water changes sway or improve the extremes in my test strip results? if so how often is too frequent? and are 2-3 gallons per water change a good amount?
Thanks in advance and I look forward to read your responses and threads