Fish: Re: [tropical fish club] Connie's tank 9-19-12

Hi Connie,

With checking out your KH & GH readings first, They're much better in line
as to be what would be expected -- with your KH higher than your GH. This
might seem to indicate that your 3 dKH reading was faulty. Even since these
values rarely move very fast at all, either the 8 dKH or the 9 dKH reading
may have also been faulty -- or at least read erroneously.

Now, with your Nitrate reading of your tap water resulting in 30 ppm (or
between 20 & 30 ppm), you can't expect it to ever read lower when adding
Nitrate every time you remove it. It's going to remain about the same. Live
plants will coinsume some of it, depending on how many you use -- if you plan
to use any.

I knew my suggestion of changing 4 gallons may have been on the light side,
but I didn't want to see the Nitrite drop to zero (which it did anyway). I
did expect to see the Ammonia drop at least to about 0.35 or so from the
0.50 it's still reading, or at least down to 0.40, but as it remained at 0.50
ppm your next PWC should be around 7 gallons as I feel keeping the 0.50
Ammonia (Ammonium) will still be stressful. You may need to continue doing 7
gallon PWC's for a while to keep the Ammonia down near 0.25, but we'll see if
you can decrease it to 6 gallons soon.

It's not always easy to know how much these values might drop when trying
to take into account how much new water is needed to change them --
especially when your tap water already has 0.25 ppm Ammonia. For now, we can
disregasrd trying to keep any trace amount of Nitrite in the water for cycling
purposes.

As for your still losing fish, you may need to increase the amount of Prime
we approximated it at. For all practical purposes though, it should have
been enough, so the amount still may be fine. The SeaChem Free Ammonia test
kit may be worth considering even if it turns out you have no Free Ammonia.
At least that would put your mind at ease in that department. If you do
need more conditioner, you'll know.

Somehow, I don't feel your Guppy losses are entirely due to the water
parameters. Neons are reputed to be much less hardier than Guppies and yet
they're doing fine -- and in adverse (for them) alkaline conditions. Most
Livebearers are fairly hardy fish, especially in alkaline water. None of us know
the background of these Guppies, and this strain just may be a weaker one
through excessive inbreeding or other factor. Some of the best Guppy breeders
will tell you that these fish in general are not as hardy today as they've
been in the past. Not saying this is the reason why they died, but it
might be considered into the equation.

Ray

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