modified lung

Just trying to cull the existential boredom. 👍

I have these and sparkling gouramis. The sparkling gouramis like to hang almost at the surface underneath floaters. They eat any dry food I've tried. The licorice gouramis are in a 5 gallon so it's shallow. They seem to like hiding under the driftwood around the middle. I'm guessing if I had a lot of floaters in that tank they'd be right at the top like the sparkling gouramis. The licorice gourami have only eaten live feed for me. They are, yeah.

These are good points I forgot to mention. I had thought about this for testing my greenwater cultures. Microalgae consumes KH and the pH can be anywhere between 6 and 9 so the amount of NH3 in the greenwater jar may not be the amount of NH3 I'm adding to the Moina jar when feeding. I think it will work out though. Really you can wait any amount of time and make a calibration curve based on the colors that develop with different concentrations for that same amount of time. I don't know if this is true of all tests, but I've noticed the longer the test wants you to wait, the more stable the color becomes. Tests with a 30 second wait have to be read right away or their color changes. Tests with a 20 minute wait can sit around for a day and still be about the same color. You could say the 20 minute test is better but when I'm at home I'm impatient and would rather wait 30 seconds even if there's a bigger margin for error. I just have to not be too lazy to set a timer ...again. If you mean after your cycle should already be established, nitrite-oxidizing bacteria are a lot more sensitive to basically everything compared the ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. That could be why you have nitrite show up but never ammonia. Ammonia (NH3) = N-H-H-H Ammonium (NH4+) = N-H-H-H-H pH is determined by how much free H+ (hydrogen ions) is in the water ("free" means it's not attached to anything else, it's just by itself). Lower pH means there's more free H+. When there's a lot of free H+ flying around, some of it attaches to NH3 which turns it into NH4+. That's why there's less NH3 at low pH. The extra H in ammonium gives it a positive charge (+) which makes it less toxic because that makes it more difficult to be absorbed into a fish's bloodstream. The lethal concentration (LC) of ammonia (NH3) is usually somewhere between 1 and 3 ppm over 2 or 3 days of exposure. The lowest fish LC I know of is for cardinal tetras which is between 0.3 and 0.4 ppm over 4 days of exposure. The LC of ammonium (NH4+) is usually around 40 to 50 ppm. I hope that all made sense. The Seachem alert card measures ammonia (NH3) which is the more toxic form. The ACO test strips seem to also measure ammonia (NH3). The color chart on the bottle says water change at 1.0 ppm which is above the lethal concentration of NH3 for some fish. (This is why I'm wondering if the manufacturer made a mistake with either the type of test ACO wanted or with the chart.) The API liquid test kit measures both NH3 and NH4+ combined which is called "total ammonia" or "NH3/NH4+". No problem. It's hard for me to find a balance between explaining stuff and long winded-ness.

More surprise fish? What are you trying to do to us?!

You're right about all of that. What's odd about the ACO strips is the color chart. The same exact alert scale is used on NH3+NH4 tests. That's why some people assume the ACO strips test for NH3+NH4.

Technically, they do work fine ...they work really, really well for their range of accuracy actually. There just seems to be a lot of miscommunication over what the strips are actually testing which I'm not sure they realize.

I finally got some breeding! I relocated the fry and dad to a separate 1 gal tank but will be taking the dad back out soon. If anyone has any other tips, let me know. I can't say for certain what the trigger was. Some new things I did recently... (1) Added a 2.5x2.5x4" green plastic pot as a breeding cave. Before this I had 1" capped PVC couplings which are about the size of the film canisters that are usually recommended. I've been wondering if they don't like the coupling being bright white because film canisters are usually black. Then last week I allowed the plastic pot to float to the surface. Not sure if that made a difference. (2) Allowed half of the water to evaporate over the last month or two. A few days ago I refilled the tank half way back to the top with RO water and the next day the rest of the way. This dropped the conductivity from ~ 80 to 45 uS. One of the bottles of RO was maybe 10°F warmer than the tank so there might have been a small upward temp swing. All other parameters stayed the same. ----------------------------- Feeding moina, simocephalus, and ceriodaphnia. Temp = 76-82°F pH = 5.5 Conductivity = 45 uS TDS = 29 ppm GH, KH = 0 NH3, NO2, NO3 = 0

It's mostly that the color chart doesn't make a lot of sense for NH3 in aquariums. For example, the lethal concentration of NH3 for many fish is only 1.0 ppm NH3. For cardinal tetras the 96 hour LC50 is 0.3 ppm NH3 to give an extreme example. It doesn't make much sense to water change at or above the LC like the chart suggests. You'd want to do it far, far below that. I've seen guppies have problems with < 0.1 ppm NH3. The chart definitely makes sense for total ammonia though. And looks exactly like the charts in on other kits that measure total ammonia but also just say "ammonia" on the front label. That's why I assumed they weren't meant to measure NH3. I completely agree. I'd love a NH3 strip with a measurement range more like the Seachem ammonia alert cards. I've noticed the Seachem cards also have a bad reputation because people also assume they measuring total ammonia. I think if the product labels clearly said "unionized" or "free ammonia" instead of just "ammonia", they'd get a lot less complaints. I think we're usually just given rules of thumb that assume high pH which is fine IMO. Personally, I think it's a mistake for these companies to assign specific numbers to color changes. If they gave ranges instead people might not expect an unreasonable amount of accuracy.

I've done it too. The goldfish did breed though. Even though I told them not to.

I think ACO products are some of the best out there. And so far I'm finding the Multi-test Strips to be crazy accuracy. I'm wondering if the manufacturer screwed up this batch of ammonia strips or if there was a miscommunication when developing them. Aquarium hobbyists tend to refer to all forms of ammonia as just ammonia. Honestly, I do it too. Ask for an ammonia test strip and that's exactly what was made. Unless I missed something but it all lined up so perfectly and consistently with unionized ammonia. @Cory would probably want to know.

I recently bought some Aquarium Co-op test strips. A few people on the forum have been having problems with the ammonia strips. I've been a water quality analyst for quite a few years now—previously at a research lab for fish conservation and now at a large network of fish farms. In that time I've done a lot of experimenting with the different test kits I've been provided. So I thought I'd try to figure out why people are having problems with these strips. Before we can gauge their accuracy, we need to know what exactly the ACO ammonia test strips are testing. There are multiple types of ammonia—ammonia (NH3), ammonium (NH4+), and total ammonia (TA or NH3/NH4+) which is the total amount of NH3 and NH4+ combined. NH3 is also often referred to as "unionized ammonia" or "free ammonia" to more clearly differentiate it from the other forms. Some tests only report the nitrogen in ammonia (NH3-N, NH4-N, total ammonia-nitrogen/TAN) but the difference isn't very significant at low levels (1.0 ppm NH3-N = 1.2 ppm NH3). The ACO test strip bottle is labeled "Ammonia Test Strips". If we take the label literally, we might believe the strips test for NH3. However, this is hard to trust because many test kits, especially for the aquarium hobby, aren't very clear about what exactly is being tested. Turning the label around, NH3 would not make sense with the color scale given on the back of the label. For example, I would think the "caution" level for NH3 would be considered closer to 0.02 ppm which is far lower than the 0.5 listed on the label. Not to mention 0.5 ppm NH3 would kill many fish in a couple days which I personally would label as "change water" instead. Here's the ACO ammonia strip color chart next to an example of a NH3 color chart that does make sense: However, the ACO color chart does make sense if the strips are instead testing for TA or for NH4+. For reference, the API ammonia liquid test kit measures TA. And the API color chart is very similar to the ACO chart. How Different Types of Test Strips Work If you're not interested in how ammonia test strips work, feel free to skip to the "Experiment" section of this post. Generally, test strips that measure TA or TAN have two pads. Notice the front labels of both these test strips say "ammonia". However, the back label of the HACH Aquachek ammonia strips specify that TAN is being tested while the ACO back label still only says "ammonia" (HACH is a company that makes highly accurate, scientific grade water quality test kits) Here's a photo of HACH ammonia test strips next to the ACO ammonia test strips: A lot of people here already know that the amount of NH3 and NH4+ in a water sample depends on the pH. Higher pH means more NH3. Lower pH means more NH4+. The large pad on the HACH strip increases the pH of the water sample to 10 in order to convert all of the NH4+ to NH3. The small pad then measures the NH3. To work properly this requires the water sample to be a specific volume. In this case the HACH instructions specify that each water sample should only be 3 milliliter or the result may not be accurate. The API liquid ammonia test kit works in a very similar way. The bottle #1 reagent increases the pH and the bottle #2 reagent measures the NH3. ACO strip instructions don't mention a specific volume of water is necessary. In fact, videos made by ACO themselves show their strips being dipped into a 1 or 2 liter container of water and even straight into a large-ish fish tank. This would mean no pH change is required for the strips to work. I confirmed the HACH strip alters the pH by placing a whole strip into some 7.0 pH calibration solution and measuring the pH increase. The pH only rose to 8.0 because the volume of calibration solution was more than 3 milliliters. I did the same with an ACO strip and no change in pH was observed. But ACO strips don't need to change the pH if they were meant to measure only either NH3 or NH4+. This is only necessary if the strips are meant to measure TA. Taking all of this into consideration, I'm guessing the ACO ammonia strips are actually testing for NH4+. This would make a lot of sense because the strip might only need one pad and in most normal cases NH4+ is close enough to TA to use the same color charts. Experiment First, I tested a sample using both a HACH Aquachek ammonia strips and a HACH liquid test vial read with a HACH spectrometer. For test strips (and liquid tests as well), keep in mind the results rarely look exactly like the color charts because of a number of factors that influence the speed and intensity of the color change. Temperature and light are two examples. This means, if you want a high degree of accuracy, you have to develop an eye for interpreting the results with your testing conditions and habits. Of course this isn't easy unless you have tests from known concentrations to compare with your results. But for knowing if your aquarium is in a safe general range, this isn't terribly necessary. In developing an eye for HACH strips I've learned to pay more attention to the amount of yellow that fades than the shade of green that develops. I would interpret my HACH strip results as 0.8 or 0.9 ppm TAN. The liquid test vial and spectrometer showed 1.16 ppm TAN. Close enough for a strip. Next, I took part of the water sample and some baking soda until the pH rose to 8.1 just to see if there will be any noticeable difference. Lastly, I took another part of the original sample and added enough ammonium chloride to bring the TAN up to about 200 ppm. Unfortunately, I don't have a test that can measure such a high amount of TA. But we shouldn't need to because all we need to see with this sample is if the strip results read within the range of the kits or off the charts. Here are the possible results we should expect depending on what the ACO strips are measuring (the amount of NH4+ is a little higher than the TA because of the extra H compared to NH3): Original + Baking Soda + Ammonium Chloride pH 7.3 8.1 7.3 TAN 1.2 ppm 1.2 ppm ~200 ppm TA 1.4 ppm 1.4 ppm ~240 ppm NH3 0.02 ppm 0.10 ppm ~2.7 ppm NH4+ 1.5 ppm 1.4 ppm ~255 ppm Results Here are the ACO test results for for the original water sample (left) and the sample brought to pH 8.1 (right). The two results look almost the same: 0.5 ppm: This might look like an unexpected result but we should first know that all water quality tests have a range of accuracy. For ammonia tests that range is usually above 0.25 ppm. That means to the human eye even trace amounts of ammonia will look almost exactly like 0.25 ppm on the color chart. For example, in the past I've compared the results from the API liquid ammonia test kit with HACH liquid test vials read with a spectrometer. I found that even readings around 0.02 ppm TA with the liquid vials and spectrometer looked exactly like 0.25 ppm TA on the API color chart. But given that 0.5 ppm is the next color after 0 ppm on the ACO ammonia strip color chart, the range of accuracy for this test is probably above 0.5 ppm instead of 0.25 ppm. That means these do show one of the possible expected results: between 0 and 0.5 ppm. But that's not all. I said they "almost" look the same. Notice the more yellow ring around the edges of the pad on the right? On some strips that means a slightly lower concentration was measured. Although, I haven't used the ACO strips for long enough to be certain if this is the case here. Either way, these results don't make sense if the ACO strips are measuring TA or NH4+. They would, however, make sense if the strips were measuring only NH3. Here are the results of the sample + ammonia chloride with the HACH and ACO strips: As you can see the HACH strips read off the charts which is expected if they measure TAN. The ACO strip reads I'd say somewhere around 2.0 or 3.0 ppm. The ACO strips again line up with the expected NH3. But that's not all. Interestingly, when using an ACO strip on a 3 milliliter water sample that was already tested by a HACH strip, the ACO results showed the correct amount of TA (1.2 ppm) instead. Remember, the large pad on the HACH strip increases the pH to 10 in order to convert all of the TA to NH3. My pH meter isn't small enough to fit into 3 milliliter so I couldn't confirm the pH was at 10. But I was able to confirm the large pads do increase pH in a larger volume sample, so I trust the HACH strips work as described. Here's a picture of another ACO strip used on the original sample (left) next the a strip used on a sample exposed to a large HACH pH altering pad: Conclusion That's at least 3 points of evidence that ACO ammonia test strips only measures unionized ammonia (NH3). Each part of the experiment I described above was repeated at least 3 times with water from 3 different sources each with 3 different concentrations of TA. The results all lined up with ACO strips measuring NH3 …and very accurately I might add. I was easily able to distinguish between 0.8 and 1.2 ppm. Far, far more easily than with the expensive HACH strips. That's extremely impressive. And extremely useful for applications where NH3 doesn't need to be so low. So this might not be such a big deal …the Seachem Ammonia Alert cards only measure NH3 for example. But the Seachem cards have a color chart that makes sense for the typical levels of NH3 that might be found in an aquarium …while the ACO ammonia strips do not. Unfortunately, that makes the ACO ammonia strips not very useful for most aquarium applications, especially if the range of accuracy is indeed above 0.5 ppm. Edit: I've confirmed the range of accuracy seems to be above 0.5 ppm NH3. In testing my blackwater tank with a pH of 5.5, the ACO strip showed 0.5 while other tests including TA tests showed 0. Although the ACO pad did again have the yellow ring around the edges that I mentioned earlier. (For reference, at pH 5.5 there would only be 0.0002 ppm NH3 for every 1.0 ppm TA.) ---------------- This is kind of awkward. It seems a lot of people on here have had problems with the ACO ammonia strips. I was hoping if I bought some, I could find what was being done wrong. But I think people are in fact using them correctly. The strips are just measuring something very different (NH3) than what I think is reasonable for them to believe (TA). I mentioned these are still useful for some applications. I plan on using them for my many greenwater cultures. I sometimes add high amounts of NH3 to them. I've been looking for a quick, cheap way to test if the greenwater has consumed enough NH3 to be safely dumped into my other live feed cultures (daphnia, moina, etc.). These ACO ammonia test strips will work great for this, especially since they can be cut in half without affecting their accuracy.

It's problem not often talked about in the aquarium hobby. That changes today.

True. I have a habit of using the terms interchangeably because I'm lazy.

Stress is definitely the #1 cause. I'd say the top causes for stress that lead to disease or death are: Stressful events (shipping, equipment failure, ...) Weak genetics (over sensitivity to stress, bullied by other fish, out competed for food, ...) Water quality (quick changes, long term exposure to slightly toxic conditions, wrong conditions, ...) Poor fish care (exposing your fish to Nickelback) But the worst is when there's multiple stressors at the same time. IMO that's the reason for most spontaneous deaths.

Peat moss and drift wood will lower pH but in my experience it takes a lot and a long time. Botanicals like dried leaves and alder cones do the same. Nitrifying bacteria lowers pH over time. How fast depends on how much you feed. They eat 7 ppm of bicarbonate alkalinity (which is how the pH gets lowered) for every 1 ppm of ammonia they convert to nitrate. For most aquariums you'd have to not do any water changes for months to see a good drop. But if you let them go forever, they'll bring your KH to 0 and pH to around 6.5 sometimes lower. Some plant substrates will lower pH. My UNS Contrasoil lowers pH relatively fast. Maybe by 1 pH over a month, but I never actually measured how fast so that might be off.

Nice, I always like it when people report back. Because RO water has no KH, the pH can be all over place depending on conditions. Idk why it went up so much in your case. I've never use RO. For your tap water, if you test your KH and it's really high, that would confirm there's CO2 in your tap. 8.2 pH usually goes with high KH. There usually isn't enough CO2 in tap water to be a big deal but some cities do weird stuff to their water. For the nano tank, I'd guess the pH went down a little because of some metabolic activity happening in the gravel, bacteria or other microorganisms. Like @JettsPapa said, I wouldn't mess with your pH unless you want fish that really really need low pH.

Not 100% sure but I think 24 hours should do it.

Tap water often come with elevated CO2 which lowers its pH. After sitting in a bucket for a while or being added to you tank, the CO2 off gasses over time which causes your pH to go up (or more accurately, it causes your pH to return to normal). It's aeration or water turbulence/turnover, not oxygenation, that raises pH by off gassing the CO2.

Too much water change can slow your cycle but so can too much nitrite. Back when I used to cycle 50+ tanks a year and tested 2-3 times a week, I noticed if nitrite went much above 1 ppm, it would often hang at that level sometimes for months until it was water changed below that.

Must be a youhiki thing. It's really obvious on my white miyukis but I've also noticed its harder to see on the youhiki oranges. There seems to be a lot of differences between strains of ricefish. My whites took a few month to breed indoors but bred outside right away. My oranges bred indoors right away but not for a few months after being moved outside. Then the whites don't eat their own fry while the oranges do.

I'm not 100% sure but I'm leaning toward male on both of those. I've been told if they have any red or orange at all, then it's a male. I've only had one scarlet badis female and it was the most dull grey/tan color you've ever seen. Although I haven't had a lot of scarlet badis so I'm not sure. I think I know what you mean about the face. Black tiger badis females have a slightly more flat face and a shorter "neck" region.

UNS Contrasoil. It took about 10 months to look like that because no CO2 or ferts.

I found an infusaria-like swarm of green specks in my bacteria fed rotifer jar. Possibly "green paramecium" which according to my secret sources (Google) has a symbiotic relationship with a "chlorella-like algae". No idea if this is a viable food source but it's different and different is cool.

ACO order. Trying the strips out for the first time.