jsonnenmoser
Fri Jan 14, 2011, 11:04 PM
Hi to all from Melbourne
Back into Discus keeping after a few years of absense. Our tank has now been going for some 7 months and all Discus are doing well, fingers crossed, we haven't yet lost one fish! They are eating, colouring nicely and some of them even paired up and are spawning though we haven't had any fry yet.
Generally speaking, the Discus seem to be in good health and the tank seems to be doing o.k.
I used to test PH (as well as all other water parameters) with API and Seachem. Both only measure PH down to 6.0 which I thought was o.k. at the time as I had some peat in my Eheim.
About 3 months ago, I got myself a GHL with PH probe. ... o.k.. before I get flagged for this, the PH probe has been calibrated and recalibrated. It is in a GHL container between the outflow of the Eheim and the Aquarium. The cables of the probe do NOT cross any electrical wires and the distance between probe and computer is some 20 centimeters. The PH probe seems to be functioning fine. When I measure tap water, I get a +-7.0 reading, same with the test kits. When I measure our Malawi Tank, the probe shows 8.3, same as the test kits. In our Discus tank however, the GHL probe shows +-4.5, sometimes even going down to 4.2, which obviously the test kits can not confirm due to their range, they only show lowest value which is 6.0.
So now we are obviously a bit panicing and looking for the source of this low PH. Peat was removed from Eheim some weeks ago.
What is in the 400l tank:
10 Discus (medium size)
1 Cleaner Fish (some sort of Amazon catfish, name escaped my memory)
3 plants (Amazon swords)
1 Plant on root (I think it is drift wood, was bought like that from LFS)
Substrate is Flourite (approx. 3 bags)
Eheim Filter with Seachem Matrix and Eheim Pads and Eheim Coal Filter
Bubble Stone with Sponge Filter (in case we need to set up a quaranteen tank we would use this sponge filter for transfer)
Internal Blue Planet 36W UV Purifier with separate small pump
We never used Flourite as a substrate before and are suspecting that it could be the cause of the low PH? Previously we had Discus tanks, set up pretty much the same except with gravel as substrate and PH would be pretty stable at +-7.0 (tap water quality)
Water Values:
Amonnia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5-10ppm
GH 2
kh 3
Temp 28.3
We feed our Discus 1-2 times daily, only frozen Blood Worms and Brine Shrimps, 4-6 blocks in total per day. We do water changes at least every 2nd day, approx 60-80 ltr which equates to 20%.
After water changes (tapwater treated with Seachem Prime) PH tends to raise to +-5.2-5.5 and then drops again down to 4.x over a 10 hr period.
But it continues to drop, meaning, if we do not change water after 2 days, PH goes as low as 4.2 and would possible go even lower without a water change.
LFS recons it might be overfeeding and/or too much disolved waste. However, we do use a siphon gravel cleaner to clean the substrate on water change and there is hardly any "dust", meaning the water getting sucked out is pretty clean. There is also not too much food left, we take time feeding and usually wait for a food block to be consumed (picked up) before inserting the next block. So it is not a matter of "food everywhere"during/after feeding.
The only other "thing"in the aquarium, which we also never had before is a commercially available (bought with aquarium and installed by LFS) background. This is a "rubber/poly"type background which got siliconed in by LFS. No idea if this could cause a low PH? perhaps due to certain materials used, but then again, surely someone else would have noticed that before.These backgrounds (which are not cheap) are sold by all LFSs in the Melbourne area.
Any advice and experience would be greatly appreciated
best regards
Ina & Jurgen
Back into Discus keeping after a few years of absense. Our tank has now been going for some 7 months and all Discus are doing well, fingers crossed, we haven't yet lost one fish! They are eating, colouring nicely and some of them even paired up and are spawning though we haven't had any fry yet.
Generally speaking, the Discus seem to be in good health and the tank seems to be doing o.k.
I used to test PH (as well as all other water parameters) with API and Seachem. Both only measure PH down to 6.0 which I thought was o.k. at the time as I had some peat in my Eheim.
About 3 months ago, I got myself a GHL with PH probe. ... o.k.. before I get flagged for this, the PH probe has been calibrated and recalibrated. It is in a GHL container between the outflow of the Eheim and the Aquarium. The cables of the probe do NOT cross any electrical wires and the distance between probe and computer is some 20 centimeters. The PH probe seems to be functioning fine. When I measure tap water, I get a +-7.0 reading, same with the test kits. When I measure our Malawi Tank, the probe shows 8.3, same as the test kits. In our Discus tank however, the GHL probe shows +-4.5, sometimes even going down to 4.2, which obviously the test kits can not confirm due to their range, they only show lowest value which is 6.0.
So now we are obviously a bit panicing and looking for the source of this low PH. Peat was removed from Eheim some weeks ago.
What is in the 400l tank:
10 Discus (medium size)
1 Cleaner Fish (some sort of Amazon catfish, name escaped my memory)
3 plants (Amazon swords)
1 Plant on root (I think it is drift wood, was bought like that from LFS)
Substrate is Flourite (approx. 3 bags)
Eheim Filter with Seachem Matrix and Eheim Pads and Eheim Coal Filter
Bubble Stone with Sponge Filter (in case we need to set up a quaranteen tank we would use this sponge filter for transfer)
Internal Blue Planet 36W UV Purifier with separate small pump
We never used Flourite as a substrate before and are suspecting that it could be the cause of the low PH? Previously we had Discus tanks, set up pretty much the same except with gravel as substrate and PH would be pretty stable at +-7.0 (tap water quality)
Water Values:
Amonnia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5-10ppm
GH 2
kh 3
Temp 28.3
We feed our Discus 1-2 times daily, only frozen Blood Worms and Brine Shrimps, 4-6 blocks in total per day. We do water changes at least every 2nd day, approx 60-80 ltr which equates to 20%.
After water changes (tapwater treated with Seachem Prime) PH tends to raise to +-5.2-5.5 and then drops again down to 4.x over a 10 hr period.
But it continues to drop, meaning, if we do not change water after 2 days, PH goes as low as 4.2 and would possible go even lower without a water change.
LFS recons it might be overfeeding and/or too much disolved waste. However, we do use a siphon gravel cleaner to clean the substrate on water change and there is hardly any "dust", meaning the water getting sucked out is pretty clean. There is also not too much food left, we take time feeding and usually wait for a food block to be consumed (picked up) before inserting the next block. So it is not a matter of "food everywhere"during/after feeding.
The only other "thing"in the aquarium, which we also never had before is a commercially available (bought with aquarium and installed by LFS) background. This is a "rubber/poly"type background which got siliconed in by LFS. No idea if this could cause a low PH? perhaps due to certain materials used, but then again, surely someone else would have noticed that before.These backgrounds (which are not cheap) are sold by all LFSs in the Melbourne area.
Any advice and experience would be greatly appreciated
best regards
Ina & Jurgen