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A sudden rise of KH
This morning I woke up to a horrible scene of dying fish in
my 75G show tank. A half of my fish were belly up and the
rest were gasping for air. This sent me scrambling for my
test kits and frantically checking pH, KH and CO2 bubble
rates, etc.
The pH value of the tank water has not changed much from the
norm (about 6.6 at 7:00 am) but my KH was up to 6.0 this
morning instead of the normal 4 to 4.5 level. My fish was
definitely suffering from CO2 toxicity.
A call to the local utility company revealed that they just
recently rerouted water to my area due to the decreasing
demand for water in the recent weeks. They must maintain a
certain amount of water usage to various wells by contract
so they reroute water to various places from time to time
depending on the water usage. My area is normally served by
two separate water sources/wells. Evidently I get a
majority of water from one well (with a carbonic hardness
level of 75 to 85 ppm) over the summer time when the water
usage is high with most people watering their lawn and
gardens. In the fall they switch the ratio and I get more
water from another well which has a much higher carbonic
hardness level of 150 to 170 ppm.
Recently I switched to Eheim 2026 from Aquaclear 500. I use
my filter as CO2 reactor by injecting CO2 from the intake.
This change in the filter (the increased efficiency in the
CO2 dissolution) and the KH change totally caught me off
guard. I must admit I did not check KH level yesterday when
I did my weekly 50% water change. I suppose I was getting
complacent about checking some of my water parameters lately
since KH has not changed over the last few months at all and
CO2 toxicity level was never a problem using Aquaclear
filter as reactor.
I guess this episode of mine illustrates the importance of
periodically checking KH and pH, especially when the season
changes. Luckily a massive water change this morning saved
most of my fish. I lost two Amano shrimp and one
apistogramma cacatuoides as far as I can tell. When I lifte
d a section of the glass top to test water, Amano shrimp
started jumping out at me. Boy what a commotion this made
with dogs and a cat at my heel (mostly due to my yelling -
imagine trying to get to these slippery jumpy guys before my
hungry pets did.)
Sorry about my rambling but I hope this might help someone
from having a similar situation on hand.
Tomoko