The Puffer Forum

I am having all sorts of water trouble in my tanks. 3 of the tanks I'm not worried about as I have them under treatment. I got some mysterious illness. Anyways my big tanks crashed and then like a week later my shrimp tank then my puffer tank crashed. So I put the puffers and shrimp together to try and put both filters with what was left of good bacteria together. It's not working it seems. The ph is just now creeping up to 6.2 and everything else is 0. Even the tank water is staying ugly and cloudy and it stinks. I did over 50% water change yesterday. Didn't do one today as there was no ammonia or nitrite. Any advice?

Keep doing large water changes. Have you tested your tap water? Sprayed any chemicals in your house?

something similar happened to me and it turned out being one of my plants causing the problem...i cant for the life of me remember what kind it was but once i took the plant out the water was completely clear within 2 days and the rest of the stuff such as ph etc. went back to normal over about a 1 week time frame

Sounds like you may not have the alkalinity to support your bacteria. What is your tank and tap KH? If it's really low, you can add aragonite to your filter, and you can add baking soda to your exchange water. http://dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/calKH.asp

I have crushed coral mixed in with the gravel. Thought I had enough in the tank already but I guess most of it has disintegrated. My tap KH is extremely low and so I have to have crushed coral in all my tanks or they super crash. Although normally by now the coral should have raised the PH to 7.6-7.8 and it hasn't yet

Crushed coral may not be sufficient, try adding the dissolved baking soda according to that link. It's what I have to do, it's safe and effective.

"UP to" 50%? We all do 50% weekly here.

I'd imagine it depends on the tank's stocking. Under 50% may have been fine for her up till now. I don't think insufficient water changes are going to cause something like this, though... I feel like something else is up...

I think my tap water went quack on me as it crashed all my tanks one by one and gave my angelfish nitrates burns and now they have some odd parasite. I'm going to go out and buy some RO water to change the puffers tank

Wow, your nitrates must have been HIGH - what were they?

over 160 and that's with weekly 50% water changes

RO/DI water has no alkalinity and hardness, you'll have to add bicarbonates, magnesium, calcium, so on. That soft of water isn't appropriate for puffers. And with zero KH, the bacteria needs KH to function.

Are you on a well or something? Nitrates so high are not safe for drinking. If you're on city water then they need to do something about that. Do you have a friend with better water that you can get some from?

At home we have a well and I guess due to fertilizer abuse our nitrates went from 0-5 (consistently for years) to about 80. Now we have to get water from somewhere else to drink/cook. Really sucks because after 23 years there our water is no longer drinkable and we have no control over what the surrounding farmers do to their fields. Apparently that's my rant for the day

All of this discussion is pretty pointless without any water parameters other than nitrate.

The high nitrate level is characteristic of Old Tank Syndrome (OTS). It is corrected by repeated water changes but may also be a sign of overstocking and/or overfeeding along with insufficient water changes. There is no way to tell without more info on the water parameters and tank stocking and handling.

I'm going to move this to Hospital. Thing1Thing2, when you next open the thread, you'll see a big red block above the thread with red text - read and answer the questions.

For everyone else, more info on the situation: viewtopic.php?f=37&t=29075