Joined
·
676 Posts
I woke up this morning and was about to administer my daily dose of ferts to my 29g when I see an Amano shrimp halfway up the rim of the tank. I tap it back into the water and pour in my ferts. I was just browsing through some of the shrimp archives and remembered someone mentioning that shrimp typically try to jump when water conditions are bad...but I haven't had any problems with this tank. So I step back and take a look into the tank...to my horror I see pink and white bodies littering the micranthemoides
Then I see my fish at the surface gasping for air.
I started an airstone while I got out the Python to do a water change, took a sample of water out for testing and tallied my losses. Of the 20 Amanos I added last Friday I lost 14. Also lost were my rubber-lipped pleco and 2 Flying Foxes (don't ask :x ). Suprisingly all three of my ottos made it.
When I tested the water I found that the pH had dropped to 6.5 from the 6.9 it had been holding at since Thursday. The KH is 10 so CO2 went from ~40ppm to over 90ppm! I checked the CO2 regulator and it was still feeding ~1bps. Now I have it turned back to .5bps but I still can't understand why the CO2 concentration shot up as it did. Before I installed the pressurized CO2 I was running 2 1gal juice bottles that were putting out ~1bps and the pH never got below 6.8.
I also tested for ammonia and nitrites and found 0 ammonia, but .25ppm of nitrites (which dropped to trace levels after the water change).
I've spent a lot of time looking at this tank over the weekend (I re-scaped it on Friday plus added the shrimp) and never noticed any stress in any of the inhabitants. So I'm baffled. pH is back up to 6.9 after the water change but you can bet I'll be monitoring it closely for the next couple of days.
If I can find any silver lining to this event, it's that at least some of the Amanos survived so I know I do have a few hardy shrimp in the mix.
Sorry for the novella, but I had to vent.
I started an airstone while I got out the Python to do a water change, took a sample of water out for testing and tallied my losses. Of the 20 Amanos I added last Friday I lost 14. Also lost were my rubber-lipped pleco and 2 Flying Foxes (don't ask :x ). Suprisingly all three of my ottos made it.
When I tested the water I found that the pH had dropped to 6.5 from the 6.9 it had been holding at since Thursday. The KH is 10 so CO2 went from ~40ppm to over 90ppm! I checked the CO2 regulator and it was still feeding ~1bps. Now I have it turned back to .5bps but I still can't understand why the CO2 concentration shot up as it did. Before I installed the pressurized CO2 I was running 2 1gal juice bottles that were putting out ~1bps and the pH never got below 6.8.
I also tested for ammonia and nitrites and found 0 ammonia, but .25ppm of nitrites (which dropped to trace levels after the water change).
I've spent a lot of time looking at this tank over the weekend (I re-scaped it on Friday plus added the shrimp) and never noticed any stress in any of the inhabitants. So I'm baffled. pH is back up to 6.9 after the water change but you can bet I'll be monitoring it closely for the next couple of days.
If I can find any silver lining to this event, it's that at least some of the Amanos survived so I know I do have a few hardy shrimp in the mix.
Sorry for the novella, but I had to vent.