PH Variation in tank (tropical)
Hi Steve / Lenny Here comes my naivety, in the past when I’ve had fish (in the majority of occasion there been fresh water fish) this is the second time in my life that I’ve kept tropical and I’ve basically just put the tank together, waited for a week then started adding fish never had a problem before.
This time however, I thought I’d better take more care , anyway I’m not really sure what you mean by establishing a nitrogen cycle. I will try and recall how I set up the tank.
The previous owner of the tank had really bad arthritis in his hands and didn’t look after the tank that well. Apparently the last lot of fish died after they had been moved. I cleaned the tank out with rock salt and salty water. After cleaning the tank and the ornaments, we waited for about a week or two before getting the gravel. The gravel is riverbed gravel and I was interstate when my partner cleaned the gravel. It was cleaned in running water then double rinsed. We set up the tank the way we wanted it to look. Added the water straight from the cold water tap with water ager (1 bucket may have been from the hot water tap).
We let the tank run for about 1 weeks with just water. Then we added the heater and let run for about a week with the thermostat set at 27 degrees C.
The we got 4 bristle cat fish and 2 upside cat fish and 2 plants. Let the tank acclimatise for another week while trying to get the GH and KH.
The only test that we have done has been PH, GH and KH. I’m not totally sure what the HK is except its chemical base and I don’t try and adjust it. The PH quite often is around 7.0 7.2 and the GH is about 7 drops.
We recently did a water change where we removed about 25 litres (20 being tap water and 5 being rain water). I added the chemical salt to the water prior to adding it to the tank (note that the buckets remained standing overnight before placing into tank).
Please note: the gravel was brought from a aquarium suppliers and not taken from a river bed.
Can you expand on what the nitrogen cycle is please. Jasmine
Category: AquaticLife
