Unfortunate Circumstances

I've held off posting this for a few days, its a combination of embarrassing and... well its hard to call the loss of three fish worth $14 tragic but there it is. Yes I lost three more fish. My mickey mouse platy and the two cories.

In my endeavor to get my pH under control I dosed my water with buffering salts. The salts react with the alkalines in the water and make CO2. The downside to controlling pH in this way is that each time I add water during a regular water change the pH will go wonky as I add pH 8.0 tap water to the mix. Which means more salts which means the pH jumps around, etc. The best solution to dealing with the pH problems is to use reverse osmosis water which has a perfect pH of 7.0. Once I figure out the ratio of tap water to RO water to hit 7.5 I can alway use that ratio for my water changes.

Anyways, back on subject. I was testing my water's pH regularly so i would know when I had hit a good pH. The problem is that the test kit has two tests for pH, a low range one that goes from 6.0 to 7.6 and a high range one that goes from 7.4 to 8.0. Well with how high my pH was I was using the high range test. Unfortunately I can't tell colors. I bottomed out the high range pH test at light orange without realizing it and kept on dosing the salts. The big problem is that the pH scale is logarithmic. That means it's not a constant scale. A pH of 8.0 is ten times more alkaline than 7.0 and a hundred times more alkaline than 6.0. That means when the pH drops it'll start slow then go incredibly fast. Well it did.

My platy and both cories died and my neon wasn't looking good. When I used the low range pH chart it was bottomed out at 6.0. Well that tremendous a pH change is what did it. So the high pH killed off my first batch of fish and then dropping killed off the second.

Well I still had one fish alive. I siphoned off fifteen gallons of water and replaced it with dechlorinated tap water. That high pH tap water drew my overall pH up to 7.5. Amazingly enough my neon survived the correction. No matter how hard I screw up I can't kill this guy.

So there it is, I'm down to one tiny little neon tetra in a 55 gallon tank.