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Adding new danios to help current danios, even if the new ones probably won't last?

12K views 14 replies 6 participants last post by  fosschick 
#1 ·
I have a small tank (10g) with some danios and otos. Currently the pH in my tank is very low. I am in the process of raising it but it is a very slow and delicate process and I am not going to rush it. In the last month or so, two of my danios have died. I only have two left now, along with 2 otos. I am worried about the 2 danios because I know they would be better in a group. I used to have 5 of them. Anyway, especially for one of my danios whom I have had the longest, I am worried about their health due to loneliness.

My question to you guys: it is best to give them some more friends, even though the pH level is not good for new fish? Or is it better to wait until the pH is stabilized before adding any more, even if one or both of the danios would die of loneliness before it is stabilized?

I am naturally a lot more attached to the fish I already have than the ones I would be adding. I hope that doesn't make me sound insensitive though. :\
 
#4 ·
what is your ph? how do you measure your water parameters? do you have algae in your aquarium? what do you feel the otos? what about the others?
My pH is 6.0 or lower. (The pH tester I have only goes as low as 6. I have not been able to find one that goes lower.) I have been using API pH Up to raise it. The dosage suggested 20 drops for a 10 gallon tank, but I was nervous about it so I started with 5 drops a day, gradually went to 10 drops a day, then 15, now finally 20 drops a day. Started this process maybe 2 and a half weeks ago.

I measure my water with API pH test kit and API 5-in-one test strips.

I do have algae, mostly on my rocks. Looks to be a dark green algae. I try to clean the rocks once a month. I've never used any algae-reducing stuff since I have live plants. The otos never eat the food I have tried to offer them (sinking wafers, seaweed, zuchinni) so I leave them to the algae and plants.

The danios I feed mostly flakes (Wardley Advanced Nutrition), with occasional dried brine shrimp and blood worms.

You think that the algae is contributing to the pH? I didn't know that was related at all. If it is I'll definitely start cleaning my rocks weekly instead of monthly. I also bought an algae magnet scrubber the other day just to have, but I don't want to take away too much from the otos.
 
#5 ·
First important thing is to stop adding chemicals to adjust the pH. And no new fish until this is resolved.

The pH in an aquarium is caused by a combination of factors. Some of these will "resist" efforts to alter the pH, resulting in fluctuating pH which is very stressful on many fish and can cause death. Before i explain this, we need some more information, as these factors are related.

What is the pH of your tap water, out of the tap? Run a small jar of water and shake it very vigorously for several minutes before testing. Also, what is the hardness of the tap water? You can find this out from your water supply people, some have websites with water analysis information. It would help to know both the GH (general hardness) and KH (carbonate hardness). If you find their website and have trouble finding this, give us the link and I'll take a look.

To the tank: how long has it been set up? I am assuming it is 10g with originally 5 danio and 2 otos. Are these zebra danio, or something else? And you have live plants, which ones and how many? A photo of the tank would answer this last question best, if you can attach one.

What water conditioner do you use? How often do you do a partial water change, and how much water is changed? Are there any other chemicals or substances going in the tank aside from the conditioner and the pH adjuster?

Please give me all the above info and I'll continue.
 
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#6 · (Edited)
Okay!

So I didn't have a jug of water and instead used a regular size bottle of water. Tap water is 30 GH, 0 KH, pH of 7.5, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates.

Tank water is between 30-60 GH, between 0-40 KH, 6.0 or lower pH, 0 nitrites, and between 40-80 nitrates.

The tank has been set up since last August. My first tank was a 5 gal that I started last July, soon realized it was too small, and moved to the 10 g I have now.

The danios I have had are long-finned danios, I used to have 2 glofish in the group but they died. I love the long-finned variety of the danios though. At one point I had 2 long finned blues, 1 long finned zebra, and one long finned leopard. Now I have 1 blue and 1 zebra. The blue I have has been with me since my first adding of fish in the 5 gal, and I am most attached to him since I have cared for him the longest. His zebra friend is doing fine but probably a little lonely, but the blue is not doing well, since my orange glofish died last week he has now been sulking at the bottom of the tank, sometimes even just sitting on the gravel without moving his fins. I worry about him. I know it's my fault, I shouldn't have let the pH get so bad. I don't know how it happened. I used to check it weekly, and since Jan or so it was stable at 7.5, every time I'd check it, 7.5. I got lazy then and stopped checking it because it wasn't changing. Then after maybe a month and a half of not checking it (I know, I know :s), when a fish died in March or so, I checked it and suddenly it was so low. I know I shouldn't have stopped checking it.

I'm starting to wonder if my 2 rocks have something to do with this. I can't remember when I got them, but I do know that I didn't know about neutralizing them first, and I remember clearly that when I put them in the tank, they seemed to fizz, and I thought the bubbles were a good thing.

Last night I cleaned the algae off the rocks. I also poured boiling water over them, which I'd never done before. Probably should have done that when I got them.

The plants I have are gold-ribbon somethings. I think there's about 12 in the tank. Some are newer and some are older.

I do a 25% water change every weekend, and use an Eheim battery-powered vacuum about every Wednesday. I rarely do a 50% water change.

I use API tap water conditioner and API stress coat during the water changes. Also once a week I use Nutrafin Waste Control and Nutrafin Plant Gro, but not on the same day as the water change.
 

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#7 · (Edited)
Thank you for this information. Now I can explain exactly what's happening, since what you provided makes sense. This may be a bit long, but it is important to understand what occurs in an aquarium, and as you have seen, things can occur quickly to the detriment of the fish.

The pH is the measurement of the ratio between two ions, the positively-charged hydrogen ion and the negatively-charged hydroxyl ion. Acidic water has more hydrogen ions, alkaline water more hydroxol ions. Neutral water is pH 7, acidic is lower and alkaline higher on this scale.

Fish, plants and bacteria release CO2 (carbon dioxide) continually; more comes from various bacteria than the fish and plants. CO2 produces carbonic acid, and this causes the pH [which is the measure of how acidic or alkaline water is] to lower. As organics [fish waste, uneaten food, animal and plant debris, bacteria dying, etc] increase, more CO2 is released and thus more carbonic acid. It is non-stop.

The pH is loosely connected to the water hardness. Hardness is the measurement of mineral salts in the water, primarily calcium and magnesium, but others also impact hardness. Carbonate hardness (expressed as KH] is the amount of bicarbonates in the water and these act as a buffer to pH. It does this by reducing fluctuations in hydrogen ions, thus preventing the pH from lowering. But at some point the buffering capacity may be reached, and then the pH can suddenly fall, what we term a pH crash.

According to the info you have provided, your water has zero KH, which means no buffering at all. The aquarium will therefore naturally become more and more acidic, and the pH will lower. This will be steady, but not sudden, and depending upon the fish species they usually adjust. In your case, having mainly soft water fish, they are generally OK with acidic water. But it can get too acidic.

We prevent this a couple of ways. One is regular water changes. The more water changed and the more often, the more stable the pH will remain. Provided something else doesn't impact it, such as overcrowding which increases the organics beyond what this can handle.

Plants also work to keep the water stable. They do this through their diurnal cycle. In a relatively-heavily planted tank, the pH will be higher at the end of the daylight period and lowest at the end of the darkness period. I wrote at length about this in another thread, and won't repeat all that here, but you can read it if you're interested in the process; it is post #22 in this thread:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/freshwater-aquarium/ph-levels-pretty-high-68972/

The pH adjusting chemical you were using clearly was inadequate to keep up with the increasing CO2. Normally these adjusters work fairly well when the KH is non-existent, but even if it did, I would not continue to use chemicals. The fluctuating pH is highly stressful, and other side effects from the chemicals can be even worse. My thinking is always to put as little stuff in an aquarium as possible, and let nature do the work which will always be safer and less expensive.

On the plants, those are actually terrestrial plants, not aquatic. That explains their minimal impact on all this. True aquatic plants would use most of the CO2 and help prevent lowering pH. And, those plants will start to rot and cause even more acid. I would remove them and replace them with true aquarium plants. Many of the commonly-available species are included in our fish and plant profile section [second tab from the left in the blue bar across the top of the page]. Have a look, and ask any questions and one of us will be able to answer about the plants. At this stage, I would recommend fast-growing plants like stem plants because they use a lot of nutrients including CO2 from the water.

The bubbles from the rock was merely air escaping; rock is sometimes very porous. Not an issue there.

Please stop using the Waste Control. This is only making things worse, and it speeds up the decomposition of the organics adding yet more CO2. It also releases ammonia, although this is somewhat harmless since in acidic water ammonia changes to ammonium. I won't go further into that.

The water conditioner is sufficient, with each water change, enough for the replacement water volume. Plant food is fine, but as I say you need some true aquatic plants. StressCoat I would also stop, this is just another chemical mix going into the soup, and it is not needed.

I would increase your water changes to 30% and one every 3 days for a week or so to slowly stabilize the tank. This will be slow enough to not harm the fish.

Byron.
 
#8 ·
I'm glad you asked about the plants then. I had no idea these were not aquarium plants. That might explain why I could never get them to grow more than they were when I bought them, they just sit there and eventually die. I will get some new plants asap. Until then I will remove all but the newest plants, I don't want to stress the fish by suddenly having no plants at all.

What do you mean by stem plants? Don't all plants have stems? Or do you mean the kinds of thick plants I see in pet store aquariums that are like bamboo?

I will stop doing extra chemicals and start doing more water changes like you suggest. Thanks for all your help.
 
#9 ·
I'm glad you asked about the plants then. I had no idea these were not aquarium plants. That might explain why I could never get them to grow more than they were when I bought them, they just sit there and eventually die. I will get some new plants asap. Until then I will remove all but the newest plants, I don't want to stress the fish by suddenly having no plants at all.

What do you mean by stem plants? Don't all plants have stems? Or do you mean the kinds of thick plants I see in pet store aquariums that are like bamboo?

I will stop doing extra chemicals and start doing more water changes like you suggest. Thanks for all your help.
You're very welcome. Keep us posted on developments. Just go slow with the water changes.

Stem plants are plants like Brazilian Pennywort, Wisteria, Cabomba, Bacopa, and many others. They are under the "Stem Plants" section in the profiles. These plants simply grow a continuous stem from which roots and leaves emerge. You can break them at any point and create new plants with bits of the stem. They can be planted in the substrate (gravel) or allowed to float sometimes. What we call substrate-rooted plants are those like the ones you have, that have a crown from which leaves arise upward and roots downward, to put it simply. Sword plants are good substrate-rooted plants, you should consider some of those in time.
 
#12 ·
Yes, those along the front are a stem plant, though I'm not exactloy sure which one. It bears a very close resemblance to Nesaea crassicaulis, but may more likely (considering the store source) be Bacopa caroliniana. Anyway, planting it apart like that is good at this stage, as the light will be better for the lower leaves, not that there are many:). But they should recover.

You're in Philadelphia, are there no fish stores other than the chains in that city?
 
#13 ·
You're in Philadelphia, are there no fish stores other than the chains in that city?
There are I'm sure, I just don't really know of them! The other pet store I know around here is called Monster Pets, which is pricier but has lots of exotic fish (barracudas, piranhas, electric eels, pufferfish, wolf fish, and my favorite red-tailed catfish, of which I hope they warn people about their adult size!). Unfortunately they do not have any live plants.


I'm glad that the plants I got are indeed stem plants. And I think you said that with stem plants you can just cut off part of it and that part will grow on its own? Already you can see that one of them is too tall, so I would like to cut that one down. I tried to look online of what the plants might be, my only guess was moneywort for the tall ones and some kind of anubias for the ones with big heart-shaped leaves, but your guess is better than mine.
 
#15 ·
How are your fishies doing? :)

I just bought a shoal of 6 glofish for my daughter's birthday (she picked them out, but I will be the one caring for them). I am interested to hear about how your little guys fare. These are replacing our betta which we lost to some unknown illness (a long story involving many threads in the bettafish forum).

Also this thread has helped me considerably as I had some Ribbon Plant in my tank! (It is also called Lucky Bamboo, although unrelated to Bamboo and not native to Asia.) I took it out and put it in my hospital tank and lowered the water level there, so only the stems are in the water. I replaced it with some nice, stemmy, fully aquatic plants. :) So far, so good. I also have some anubias, java moss, and water sprite.

If your pH does get back on track I'd love to hear about it, especially if you choose to introduce new tank mates! :fish:
 
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