Help I'm in trouble...

Hi guys, I have a 60 litre trop set up since last March and have been keeping 5 tiger barbs, 5 Ammano Shrimp 1 albino cory successfully for a few months now. I set up a 120 litre tank at xmas to rehome the barbs and decided to plant it. It has Tetra Complete Substrate, pea gravel and Tetra CO2 Optimat which I infuse once a day in the morning. Liquid fertilizer is Hagen? Nutragro. I cycled it and moved the barbs and have gradually added 2 Bronze Corys, 6 shrimp a small Bala Shark and an upside down catfish. My water is NH3-0, NO2-0, NO3-5, pH-6.8, kH-5, gH-12.

Back to the small tank...I got the planted bug and decided to plant it out too. I emptied the tank, saved all the water and added the same stuff as the larger tank, refilled and planted out. After a couple of days the water parameters had remained steady.(NO2-0, NH3-0, NO3-5, kH-4, gH-12.) I added 10 neon tetra and 6 black widow tetra gradually and the 5 ammanos remained. The water pH had been 7.6 since I set it up last March and now it is 6.6. I have lost 4 neons since the pH dropped. I now know that the CO2 is the likely cause but I don't know what I need to do now if anything!

I noticed the fish at the surface two days ago and I increased the surface agitation for a day and this has helped, they are all back to normal. I also have a fairly good brown algae display and have blacked out a couple of times but it always comes back. I feed twice a day with Aqua One Micro pellets and Ocean Nutrition Algae wafers for the cory. Any suggestions please?!?!

Hi Maggie,

It looks to us that the pH drop has been too sudden for your fish. With these machines, the Co2 is being released 24 hours a day, that is even at night when the plants are releasing Co2 too.

Whatever you do now, if the fish are damaged, it will be irreversible. However, you probably should increase the aeration esp. at night as your pH will keep dropping with your setup otherwise : Airstone and more disruption of the water surface.

We hope this helps. Let us know how you get on !

Thanks Valerie, I'm taking that this is the long term solution or should I be thinking of making more permanent changes to any part of the setup? Just on the Optimat , it's an aerosol which fills a canister below the water line (manually done) and it infuses over a period of about 3 hours, the canister fills with water as it pushes out the CO2, until the next morning when I inject again. (Sounds kinda sordid don't it?!?) The LFS suggested injecting morning and night but I figured it couldn't be good at night so I don't do it. Am I gonna keep losing fish you reckon or will it settle?

Hi Maggie

If your fish are at the surface it is because of lack of oxygen. get an airstone in or angle any power head at the surface. never run the Co2 at night.

Hi maggie,
Ph drop by c02 doesn’t normally cause any problems for fish if done slowly and the fish will acclimatise to the ph. Unless it dropped with in an hr or so. Run the air stone as already said.
The c02 system you have will also not give a steady flow of co2 and will be very unstable, this causing algae problems. depending on how long this planted tank has bee set up brown algae is normal for the first mth or two until it matures. If it is a mature tank then the stats and lighting need to be checked.

regards

Your KH is pretty low which would explain the pH crash after adding C02. My pH out of the tap is 7.8 and my KH is high. I have overcooked the C02 on a couple of occasions, but the pH has never dipped below 6.6. You should consider buffering your water with baking soda which will incrase the pH and stabilise the pH when adding C02.

Another issue is that pH in some parts of the country has dropped considerably due to the amount of rain we've had recently. Best to check you pH out of the tap before you do a water change.

better thet NaHCO3 will be a cahco3, tetra optimat is a no god systen how can you massure how many co2 you put in ? better you use diy pucin maker
1000g of water
400g of sugar
1 pack yast (instant)
and a end of the knife a backing soda - NaHCO3
and use a ladder co2 diffuzor what let you cant a numer of bubles of gas per second, for you r carbonated hardnes it shuld be about 1 bouble per2 second, and only a day time,
and one more thing
as long as you dont have a proper light about 0,5 w /liter o water, and proper plant food there is no difrence for your plants beacouse they just cant use them
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebig%27s_law_of_the_minimum
and find a table on the internet what show u how many of co2 you must add to the tank to keep ph level on 6,8
sorry for my language
i still learn :D:D:D
but i think you understand me

Adriano you have made more sense than I do most of the time!!!

Thanks to all who replied, I am going to ignore the advice of the LFS who said the Optimat was the latest great thing in fishkeeping and try my own diy..Let you know how i do..