Pregnant or sick

[Biotope Biologist]

A few things here. First crushed coral will not dissolve efficiently to raise the kH. The thing you have to understand about water chemistry is that it does not exist in isolation. Don't worry I teach this point a lot ☺️.

 

Crushed coral is calcium carbonate. In order for the carbonate side to dissolve the calcium side also has to dissolve. With that in mind let's move on to what kH and gH are. General hardness (gH) refers to your dissolved calcium and magnesium levels. Carbonate hardness (kH) refers specifically to carbonate and bicarbonate dissolved in your water. Now back to the crushed coral example. If you have hard water (which looks like you sit pretty close to 150ppm) and low kH (40 ish ppm here) your coral cannot dissolve efficiently because there are already calcium ions in the water. I do not want to go into excruciating detail here so I will just leave it at that.

 

What you need is carbonate salts. Apparently seachem(r) has a freshwater variant of theirs called "Alkaline buffer" from what I understand it is only carbonate salts. You can pick this up at most major pet store chains or maybe Cory has some. Make sure to dose this initially to your tanks size, then subsequently to the amount of water used in your water changes. Play chemist outside the display tank first, although kH doesn't harm fish per say any water changes can cause some initial stress.

 

Your ghost shrimp need kH to be healthy and your mollies will be happier with it. Also your molly is likely pregnant don't dose the water with any more medications. Even if it is gastro infection usually feeding lighter is enough to get rid of it without medications.

 

Whew long winded sorry

Edited March 26, 2021 by Biotope Biologist
spelling and grammar

[Irene]

Sorry to hear about your trouble with the mollies! My balloon mollies were raised in fish farms that used brackish water (unbeknownst to me) and got sick about a month after I brought them home. The female had fungus and swim bladder disease. My solution was to treat them with aquarium salt (using these instructions) and add minerals using Seachem Equilibrium (since I have low GH and KH but high pH). Once the female had babies, I immediately moved all the fry to a freshwater tank with my normal tap water and I ended up rehoming the adults back to the pet store I got them from. The fry grew up used to my tap water and I had no issues with them.

Here is the care video on mollies that made me realize my problem with lack of minerals:

Here is a video on "livebearer disease" that Cory made that goes into more details:

 

[Samanthabea]

Tap water test

[Biotope Biologist]

That's unexpected! Where did your kH go in your tank? Did you retest either of them? I am stumped here, I couldn't think of anything that absorbs carbonate ions at that rate...

[Samanthabea]

Left tap water right tank water

[Samanthabea]

The only thing I can think of is the spring water or the treatments or aquarium salt that could cause this much change

[Dwayne Brown]

It might be the aquarium salt. Spring water is actually incredibaly hard water with a high kh thats why you see all the advertising for minerals disolved in water. Do you have any form of peat moss in your aquarium or filtration? One more thing when you say spring water do you mean botteled spring water or do you mean distilled bottled water? Distillid water can lower hardness. And if you can can you test the "spring water" you put in your aquarium? Diferent spring water comes from different sources some of these sources migjt have soft water?

[Dwayne Brown]

Fron what I know the only ways to make hard water soft is to 1. Collect rainwater and use that in your tank. 2. Use a reverse osmosis or ro unit. And 3. Have peat moss in your aquarium or filtration

[Hobbit]

14 hours ago, Samanthabea said:

I had added tablets to lower the ph a couple weeks ago(at the time the ph was at 8.4) but it held at 7.8 for the longest time did that throw everything out of whack

@Biotope Biologist my best guess is that the pH lowering tablets are the carbonate absorbing culprits here.

@Samanthabea I would just keep changing small amounts of water with your regular tap water (and get a dechlorinator to treat it) until your KH is back up to normal.

Don’t worry about the high pH. As long as the pH stays stable, the fish can adjust to it. Hard water usually has a high pH anyway, so it’s likely the mollies came from high pH water to start with.

[Biotope Biologist]

@Hobbit oh you're spot on. I must have missed that in the post.

 

@Samanthabea Well no need for lowering pH or buying alkaline buffer then I'd leave your tap as is. Of course dechlorinate if your city uses chlorine. 

[quikv6]

Livebearers should certainly like the parameters out of your tap as-is. I think the advice above is great...bring them back slowly to your tap water with small, frequent water changes. Dechlorinate, of course.

[Samanthabea]

I bought a 2.5 gallons of spring water it's all gone now but if that ph is fine then I'll stick to tap I just though 7.8 was the goal and it's just a regular tertra carbon filter I'll use the dechlorinator solution I have I know our city uses it in the water

[Hobbit]

Sounds like a plan! Yep, you’ll hear different philosophies about ideal pH, but the most experienced fish keepers will tell you not to chase the numbers. 👍 I hope your fish perks back up soon!

Edited March 28, 2021 by Hobbit
ETA: I am not one of the most experienced fish keepers—I’m just parroting them. ;)

[Samanthabea]

Disease free and a lot happier and explorative with the ph raising and salt 

[Hobbit]

Yay! That’s so great to hear!

[Samanthabea]

Sorry about the quality of the pictures still can't get the hang of photographing such quick fish really starting to think the girls are expecting