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

...

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 ...

Yesterday our club held its Summer Social event: two air-conditioned chartered buses drove about 70 members around the metroplex to visit five local sponsors (fish stores). A lot of planning went into the event, and each store prepped for the sudden onslaught of potential customers pouring into their doors at once. I took plenty of pictures and will be sharing an upcoming blog about the entire day in the very near future.

As we left each store, some newly purchased livestock was carefully ...

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 ...