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Water parameters

3K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  okiemavis 
#1 ·
I just tested the water in my 55 gallon tank and have some questions. I last did a 30% water change 10 days ago. The tank has:
3- rasbora het
3- gold barbs
4- neon tetra
5- black skirt tetra
1- guppy
2- dwarf frogs
1- common pleco
2- danios
Based on API liquid test, the water parameters are:
pH- 8
KH- 150
GH- 179
ammonia- 0
nitrite- 0
nitrate- 0
Questions:
1) Is the pH too high, especially for the fish I have? What can I do about it if needed? That is the same pH as out of the tap. My friend has tried putting in enough peat moss into her filtration that the water turned tea colored and it still didn't help the pH much.
2) Why isn't there any nitrate? What in the tank would be using up the nitrates? Should be doing less water changes?
 
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#3 ·
pH is fine as long as the fish are fine with it.

As for the nitrates, a common reason to get odd reading is from not shaking the bottles hard enough and long enough. I know it is a pain but when I test mine I shake the living daylights out of both bottles. I was amazed at how much difference it can make. 5ppm turned out to be 40ppm. I kow it is somewhere inbetween because my test is older and I didn't shake it hard enough at first.
 
#4 ·
Thanks for the replies. My fish seem content with the pH, but my biggest worry is that my LFS has a pretty limited stock of fish. I want to add more types of fish to my new set-ups, but that would involve ordering them from elsewhere. Can fish be acclimated safely to that high of pH?

I guess I'll do another nitrate test after shaking the bottles more and see if I get more normal results.
 
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