dead fish........pleaze help

[gearbox22]

hi lost one of my gouramis this morning, my ph was 8.1 and nitrate was 50, so i did a 10% water change and added nitrazorb yesterday, got up this morning and fish was dead checked readings again ammonia 0 - nitrite 0 - nitrate 0 - tap water 7.5 , but my ph is still 8.1 ,temp 24.9 has it died of natural causes or is it the ph. have a 130 litre tank 10 dwarf gouramis and some dannios and penguin tetra also a bubble curtain that is on day and night but only low, and lighting is on 6-8 hours daily so what have i done wrong please. ps..... two of the gouramis are staying at top which they dont usually do is this anything to worry about,( they are pearl gouramis)
thanks

[Lady Hobbs]

Nitrate poisoning killed them probably more than the pH. Nitrates should never be over 20 and much lower if possible. Check your tap water and see what kind of readings you get right from the tap regarding the pH and nitrates.

It's possible you have something in your tank raising your pH.

10% water changes are useless. You really need to do much larger water changes to do anything at all. I never do less than 50% weekly on all my tanks. Water changes will do much more for your tank than adding stuff.

Overfeeding and dirty gravel can escalate those nitrates too.

[gearbox22]

ok thanxs 4 that lady hobbs, will keep an eye on the situation, the tap water is 7.5, only 1 fish has died up to now, and as the nitrates have lowered themselves i will have to lower the ph somehow, i dont want to give to many water changes as last time i did that i lost 11 fish as it left the tank too clean

[Lady Hobbs]

If the water from your tap is 7.5 then it should also be that in your tank. Something in there is raising it so now I have to ask what are you using for the subtrate? If it is cichlid gravel, it has coral shells in it so that will raise the pH.

After you cycled, did you do a large water change before adding your fish? pH can jump around some on an uncycled tank so perhaps just doing a large water change right now (like half) will lower everything for you. 7.5 is fine for fish. They are farm raised and adaptable to many levels of pH and 7.5 is not off the charts. I have a constant 7.6 and have had various fish and they all do fine in it.

Just make sure you have nothing in that tank that is raising it.

Do not get chemicals to lower your pH. It will only come back up again and the raising and lower of pH is harder on the fish than a constant higher pH.
Raising pH is easy but lowering it is next to impossible.

Running peat pellets thru your filter in bags will lower it naturally but you need to find out why it is so much higher than your tap water.

[SkarloeysMom]

hi lost one of my gouramis this morning, my ph was 8.1 and nitrate was 50, so i did a 10% water change and added nitrazorb yesterday, got up this morning and fish was dead checked readings again ammonia 0 - nitrite 0 - nitrate 0 - tap water 7.5 , but my ph is still 8.1 ,temp 24.9 has it died of natural causes or is it the ph. have a 130 litre tank 10 dwarf gouramis and some dannios and penguin tetra also a bubble curtain that is on day and night but only low, and lighting is on 6-8 hours daily so what have i done wrong please. ps..... two of the gouramis are staying at top which they dont usually do is this anything to worry about,( they are pearl gouramis)
thanks
How long has your tank been set up? What's your regular water change schedule? I agree with Hobbs that it is probably nitrates that caused the dead and that you need to do a much larger water change than 10%. If your Ph is always 8.1 then your fish should be used to it and that would not be the problem.

[gearbox22]

i have no idea what is raising the ph also i have put nitra zorb in and this is supposed to stabalize the readings, but is not doin so ,it has brought my nitrates from 50 to 0, but hasn,t lowered the ph , and as i have done nothin out of the ordinary i cannot think what has raised ph, i have normal community gravel in tank for my community fish ,and this gets a hoover once a month i do a water change once a fortnight i clean the filter once a week and i replace the cabons every six to eight weeks and the pump head ect get cleaned once a month , i feed the fish alternate days , i check fish daily and temp daily, so lady hobbs the ph is a complete mystery, which is why i dont know what to do next, only thing i can do is to wait untill tommorow morning and pray the fish are all alive and well thanx anyway

[Lady Hobbs]

I think some of the additives that people buy thinking they will do wonderful things do more harm than good. When products are put in our tanks that mess with the numbers, we have a harder time knowing what's going on and often get inaccurate readings.

Cleaning the gravel and doing larger water changes will probably alleviate all your problems without using additives. Sounds like you've been diligent with your tank but it might be the products you've been adding is messing things up more than helping.

ONE time I used a water clarifier and my pH went from 7.6 to -5. I did water changes twice a week for over a month and it took ages to get the reading correct again. I don't believe the pH changed at all but that product gave a false reading but it scared me enough that I put an end to adding anything to my tank but dechlorinator.

I even got a glass of water from my tap, added ONE DROP of this clarifier and the pH plummented again. Now if I didn't know better, I would have been adding pH increases to the tank which probably would have killed all my fish had I gone by the reading I was getting.

I think you'll find with larger water changes you'll have a disease free tank and more stable readings.

Don't feel bad about the gourami's. They are pretty sensitive fish to water conditions are seem to suffer the most when they're off just a bit.

Good luck

[gearbox22]

hi i have had tank set up for nearly 3 months now, the nitrate problem is now sorted, if it was the nitrates why hasnt all the fish died or was the poor 1 fish just unlucky ,as i told lady hobbs i do evrything by the book my water change is once fortnightly, ph has been lower in the past maybe 7.6 so ive no idea why its high

[SkarloeysMom]

The Ph is a bit of a mystery but like Hobbs said, larger water changes once a week instead of every 2 weeks and more gravel vacuuming will probably help stablize the tank. I don't know exactly how many fish you have in your tank or what kind of filtration you have but with 10 gouramis and the others you mentioned it may be at your tank is fully stocked. In that case it would probably be best to step up your water change schedule, etc. as mentioned.

Sorry about your gourami. I hope the rest are ok.

[sergo]

let me let you in on a little information that i have first hand info on: gouramis will die for no apparent reason. i've had 5 and 3 just fell over dead. 2 had some sort of hole in the disease that ended up killing them after 2 weeks of treatment. all of my bloodfins and sepaes that i had with them are all still alive and well.
i won't get any more.

[lasm]

It's unlikely that your gouramis will die because of high ph. Ph in my tank is over 8.0 and the water is really hard. None of mine gouramis have died because of that.

Seems that you are doing everything right. Gouramis may die without showing any symptoms. How often is it that you feed them? every other day? I feed mines twice a day.

It also sounds that you have fully stocked your tank. If that is so. Maybe it's natural selection.

[Lady Hobbs]

Sergo is right on with the gourami's. I got 10 the other day and one is darker than the others and it looks almost like he may have brown blood disease which is caused from high nitrites. My nitrites are 0. But you don't know what fish went thru prior to you buying them, either.

Fish in uncycled water can have problems later due to weaked immune systems. They may hang on for a couple weeks (giving you time to buy them) then they die. It's isn't always our fault when fish die.