Water Chemistry

So I had both my Purple Firefish die this morning. So no more adding livestock until I get to the bottom of this. Here are the results of my Salifert test kits. I did however, do a 0.2 gallon water change this morning a few hours prior to testing so I will have to wait until Friday to test again. But I don't think the readings would have been far off.

• Salinity Grade: 1.025 SG
• Temperature: 78.0 Fahrenheit
• Ammonia: 0 ppm
• Nitrite: 0 ppm
• Nitrate: 5 ppm
• pH: 8.0 pH
• Alkalinity: 11.18

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So everything until this point with water quality has just been guesswork. But I decided to do things right, so I placed another order with Premium Aquatics for a slew of quality Salifert Test Kits and Brightwell Aquatics Supplements. I had a great smile on my face this afternoon when the package arrived. It was like Christmas in August. Now I'm going to put together a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that I can track my aquariums water quality with on a weekly basis.

One of the major factors that has been affecting this aquariums stability is that it evaporates more water than I expected. For the past few weeks it seems that my daily practices included topping of freshwater during the morning hours before work and topping of more freshwater during the evening hours after work. So one of my primary goals in keeping this aquarium is water parameter stability. So I just received my Tunze Osmolator Nano that I ordered from Premium Aquatics. I went back and fourth ...

Okay, so here is a little update regarding the fish. Everything inside is currently doing well. Right out of the hospital my wife took me to a local fish store to purchase an additional cartridge of Nitrate absorbing media. We came home and I immediately did another small Dixie cup water change. Took the Fluval G3 Canister Filter offline to replace the Activate Carbon cartridge with the Tri-Waste removal cartridge (Ammonia, Nitrate and Activated Carbon). After about an hour everyone resumed ...

So unfortunately I have been in the in the hospital recovering from emergency surgery to save my life from a burst appendix. So I wasn't able to tend to my aquarium and my wife told me my fish don't look so well and that my snails are making runs out of the tank. So without any further testing I am assuming that nitrate/nitrite levels may be higher than expected. I have a my Fluval G3 Canister filter running for approximately 3 weeks now with just the stock Activated Charcoal filter and I never ...