Specs:
55 gallon planted community tank: head and tail tetras, pristella tetras, bronze corys, amano shrimp, some nerite and mystery snails.
Fluval 407
Fluval 3.0 set to 50% 7 hrs a day
The tank has been fishless cycled for about 5 weeks with a mixture of Swords, Crypts, and Ferns. Added pothos plant on top a couple of days ago.
Does with 6 pumps of Easy Green weekly.
PH levels steadied out at 7.5 this entire time. After adding the fish my nitrates rose to 40ppm with ammonia and nitrites at 0.25, so I did a 30% water change with Stability and Prime.
My tap water pH is 8.8+ and is moderately hard, so when I first cycled the tank I added some buffer to lower it to 7.5.
The problem however is that I haven't been adding any buffer when I've been topping off or during water changes, and in the past the the pH stayed steady.
After doing my 30% WC, the pH dropped to 7.2 yesterday and this morning is 7.0
Anyone have any clue what's causing this drop?
I'm going to do another WC tomorrow because my nitrate level is still a bit high for my liking but I really don't want to keep stressing out my fish.
Thanks!