nitrite spiked Now nitrite spike is gone, along with the KH and the pH dropped.

[KittenFishMom]

My 10 gallon shrimp tank has a light bio load, and I change the 2 days ago. Last night I dropped in a cube of Repashy to see how long it would last in with the shrimp and snails.

Tonight I tested the water and the nitrate was 0 and the nitrite was red. I tossed in Prime and Amo-gaurd and Fritz "7"; and went to make RO/DI water. When I was ready to mix in the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ into the RO water,  I tested the water again. The nitrate and nitrite were both back to zero and the KH had drop from low(green) to yellow(zero) and the pH had drop from 6.8 to below 6.4. in around 2 hours.

I will do the water change while I what for answers.

But I'm very confused. I'm wondering if I could just mix a scoop of the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ in a bottle of water and do a very slow drip to put the KH back? Maybe I could have added a mix of baking soda in a slow drip and monitor the pH and KH?  I'm not sure what happened to the nitrite and KH. Did the plants eat it? Did the "7" eat it? Did the good bacteria eat? 

I'm not giving that tank Repashy again. I thought it was stable and wouldn't foul the water and let fish/shrimp/snails eat over a long period of time. I don't see any sign of the cube 24 hours later.

I'm interested in any thoughts. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/6/2023 at 5:56 PM, KittenFishMom said:

My 10 gallon shrimp tank has a light bio load, and I change the 2 days ago. Last night I dropped in a cube of Repashy to see how long it would last in with the shrimp and snails.

Tonight I tested the water and the nitrate was 0 and the nitrite was red. I tossed in Prime and Amo-gaurd and Fritz "7"; and went to make RO/DI water. When I was ready to mix in the Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ into the RO water,  I tested the water again. The nitrate and nitrite were both back to zero and the KH had drop from low(green) to yellow(zero) and the pH had drop from 6.8 to below 6.4. in around 2 hours.

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh

"Think of KH like a trash can. The higher the KH, the larger the trash can. If we overflow that trash can, then a pH crash occurs."

There's two ways to view this for me and I'd like to hear others opinions. 

A tank with snails can be a ticking time bomb of sorts when it comes to ammonia spikes.  If one dies, or if you have something that causes a few to die, then you have a pretty big ammonia spike until you realize what's going on.  This is the same for other species as well, but I think it's harder for us to tell if a snail has passed.  This could be what you're seeing in the above.  The KH was used up, resulting in the PH drop, causing some issues with something, potentially a snail, that led to a spike of some kind.  If your KH is low, say under 40, then it's easy for that KH to go from 40-->20.  If your KH is at 20, then it's easy for it to go down to 0.  KH can be fickle like that where you have to get it up to a certain level to have enough stability.  This could happen with a large colony of snails and/or shrimp and is common when they "crash".

The second instance on how I view this is that potentially just the amount of bioload in the tank, feeding repashy, and that might've been "too much" so to speak for the shrimp.  From what I know of, they want a small amount of food and it's very easy to overfeed neos.  A lot of that estimation can be done based on their activity when you drop food into the tank.  If they are swarming, then it's probably the right amount of food going in.  A small piece of repashy will probably be ok and it's something I've fed mine, but if you're feeding a bigger cube it could stay in the water too long and then lead to an ammonia spike, which leads to parameter issues, which could affect snails and shrimp. 

Apart from the water test results, did you see any deaths in the tank in question? Do all of the snails look to be alive and ok? Bad smell at all?
 

On 4/6/2023 at 5:56 PM, KittenFishMom said:

I'm not giving that tank Repashy again. I thought it was stable and wouldn't foul the water and let fish/shrimp/snails eat over a long period of time. I don't see any sign of the cube 24 hours later.

A photo or two of everything going on might help.  What was the starting KH value, above 50 ppm?  When you add the shrimp buffer to your water, what is your optimal parameters you're trying to reach?

I don't think there's an issue feeding repashy.  I do think there is an ability to overfeed it, pretty easily for a shrimp only tank.  (Snails are a different story though)

[KittenFishMom]

I have been pulling any large snails when I see them and let the little ones do the clean up. I'll take and post some photos. I am in the habit of checking all 4 tanks water parm morning and night because I have to for the cory tanks. The shrimp tank was fine last night. (I over slept this morning and didn't check). 

I mix the RO/DI water one scoop of Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ to 10 litters or water. that is what it recommends on the jar. I did 20 liters tonight. When it is done dripping in, I will give you the readings.

In the tank are blue dream shrimp, ramshorn snails, bladder snails, leeches, and plants. For plants we have water lettuce, duckweed, I think that tall thing is guppy grass, ot sure about the small leafy stems, java moss, a turnip in the HOB with roots in the tank and a cryptocoryne Wendtii 'Brown. There is cholla (choya) wood, reddish lava stone, black sand capping organic potting soil. I have an HOB, a sponge filter and a heater.

photos coming right up.

 

[KittenFishMom]

Here are 10 photos of the tank. Let me know if they are helpful. I'm not sure what you were looking for. Please excuse the reflections. I am not good at this. (Note I use the distilled water bottle to drip the mixed water. I do not add distilled water directly to the tank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by KittenFishMom

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/6/2023 at 7:29 PM, KittenFishMom said:

I mix the RO/DI water one scoop of Salty Shrimp GH/KH+ to 10 litters or water. that is what it recommends on the jar. I did 20 liters tonight. When it is done dripping in, I will give you the readings.

Whenever you mix up some new water, test that too.

I think for clarity we need to see the test results, whatever values you're getting.

On 4/6/2023 at 7:29 PM, KittenFishMom said:

I am in the habit of checking all 4 tanks water parm morning and night because I have to for the cory tanks. The shrimp tank was fine last night. (I over slept this morning and didn't check). 

This might be just indicative of the tank having something and then you're testing it before the bacteria has a chance to process it.

[KittenFishMom]

tank parms now are 

nitrate 0

nitrite 0

GH around 300 maybe more

KH around 80

pH around 7.

I also have IALs and a bunch of Alder cones in the tank.

[KittenFishMom]

The only thing that was different for that take was the cube of repashy. In my fish tanks, I see the left over repashy in the morning. I could not find any leftover repashy today when I looked for it. I think the snails may have eaten it, but not in one gulp.

[nabokovfan87]

Yeah, everything seems to be in order. Just a lot of bioload on that tank.

[KittenFishMom]

I guess I don't understand what make for bioload. I thought shrimp where low bioload, and plants help balance bioload. There are no fish in the tank. I thin the snails out often. I haven't added any snails since I set it up. The 100+ cory fry were a heavy bioload, but they have all been out of the tank for weeks.  The bio rings are for the shrimp to hang out in. The turnip and the bio balls are left from the cory fry. The turnip is not as dark green as it was with the fry in there.

Edited April 7, 2023 by KittenFishMom

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/6/2023 at 9:01 PM, KittenFishMom said:

I thought shrimp where low bioload, and plants help balance bioload.

Generally, shrimp produce the least amount of waste. I can't say anything specific, but this gives you an idea of the capacity of a tank with shrimp (and some snails). I can look up the size and stuff of the tank, but hundreds in a tank is generally normal. Once I have more than 100, I'd start to plan accordingly in my own tanks.

Something like floating plants would help a lot when it comes to nitrates in this setup. The rest of his plants are very large in size, and fast growing. The faster a plant grows the more stable it makes the environment because it can respond quicker and use the available resources.

On 4/6/2023 at 9:01 PM, KittenFishMom said:

I haven't added any snails since I set it up. The 100+ cory fry were a heavy bioload, but they have all been out of the tank for weeks.  The bio rings are for the shrimp to hang out in. The turnip and the bio balls are left from the cory fry. The turnip is not as dark green as it was with the fry in there.

Yeah, things might be perfectly fine. This might just be a test at the certain time before the tank had time to process things. I am purely mentioning bioload as a thing of note because it can get out of hand. 100 shrimp in a tank each have 15-30 baby shrimp, it's a big jump. Leeches in there. Snails, they all can do the same thing if there's a lot of food introduced. If there's a lot of food, there's a lot of waste.

Edited April 7, 2023 by nabokovfan87