Loaches Online Forum

Could we stop bickering over the pH and acids right now? It's not relevant. I haven't had a single explanation for the sudden deaths. Yes, the ideal pH for kuhlis is below 7 but these guys have been living in my tank for three years. I can lower the pH but not now! The kuhlis had all been in the ta...

I lost the Pangio anguillaris . This is getting to be very frustrating. Could we stop bickering over the pH and acids right now? It's not relevant. I haven't had a single explanation for the sudden deaths. Yes, the ideal pH for kuhlis is below 7 but these guys have been living in my tank for three y...

Okay, pH aside....I'm going to just use IAL/bark and Seachem's Acid Buffer to lower it, but not now. I still haven't figured out the deaths of my kuhlis. It's no low O2, as none of my other fish are dying or breathing at the surface or being stressed. I can control the nitrate with my purigen, plant...

I lost another one this morning. The juvenile sumatranus I bought a week ago. Same as before. While I understand the chemistry behind adding such strong acids to water to lower pH, I don't think I can do this. I simply do not feel safe adding such powerful and deadly substances into a setting with l...

Bas Pels , with all due respect, trying to acidify such buffered water with tannins from some extracts is innefective. The KH buffer must be about 6n while pH being at tha value. To acidify such a water effectively we firstly have to lower the buffer. You keep saying I need to lower the kH but you ...

RO/DI is great because it gives you a blank slate (very nearly pure water) to work with but the problem is you then have to add everything back to it. Lots of work involved. You'd also need a large storage tank for the RO/DI water to accumulate in, it's not an instant process. Plants are very usefu...

I would suggest you start with a bicket of water from the tank. Measure the pH To this you add something which would acidify the water, such as oak leaf extract. A little, such as 1 ml. Then measure the pH again. Most likely, the pH is a lot lower, perhaps it went from 7.5 to 6.5. If it is more or ...

Greek wrote:

Kuhli wrote: And the ph? Shall I add some IAL/bark to the tank to lower it?

Leaves and bark won't do much with values like that. You firstly have to lower KH with mineral acids (hydrochloric or sulfuric) and than acidify water with tannins.

And I can do this by doing....?

With that much NO3 in the tap water, I think this is the source of the high NO3 readings in the tank. Continue water changes (you are removing other things besides NO3), but you may want to treat the tap water before using it to refill the tank. Store the water in a bucket or garbage can (depending...

I will add a freshly recharged Purigen to help keep the nitrate down, as well as a 75% water change, less feeding, and I've been thinking about getting Seachem Hypersorb or Renew. Rather than adding more "stuff" to remove nitrates I would focus on reducing the cause of the high nitrates in the firs...

With a mystery death I would do 2 things: 1) Increase water changes to keep NO3 under 10ppm. Including vacuuming through the substrate as much as the plant roots will allow. 2) Add UV sterilizer. Thank you for the reply. I will add a freshly recharged Purigen to help keep the nitrate down, as well ...

While your stocking might be odd, what's important is how many fishes you have in the tank, and that is not too much. When the tap water changes, water change can be the reason fish die, but in most cases, such changes are not that big. Most likely, the fish you got after it was only 1 day at the s...

Hello, everyone. I am losing kuhli loaches left and right, and I don't know why. One died out of the blue, with no prior symptoms of sickness or stress. A few weeks later I went and bought another to replace the other. It died the next day and the folks at the LFS informed me they had a bad batch th...