Wierd PH Situation

[BRI690]

I put a hold on a Mandarin Dragonet from the Petland near Perimeter on Thursday night. To make sure everything was okay to add the fish, I tested all of my water parameters and they turned out fine. So on Friday I bought the fish.
I acclimated it by letting the bag sit in the tank for about 15 minutes, then slowly added three cups of tank-water to the bag over an hour (give or take a few). The fish was doing fine- swimming around and eating a bit. This was at around 5:20 pm. After some monitoring, I left the house at 6. When I returned hime at 12, my tank water was almost completely white. Perplexed, I looked around in the tank and realized that my medium sized BTA moved itself into the powerhead and got chopped up. The tips were scattered around the tank and the anenome was dead and stuck on the tip of my powerhead. So, because of the bad water quality, I did water changed until the water was as clear as it was before and took out all the pieces of the BTA that I could find. This required about a 4 gallon water change. I did this by continuously siphoning water out of the tank and adding the new water n the refugium at the same time. After this the corals and my mandarin were alright. I went to bed then at 3 am after cleaning off the powerhead and replacing it.
When I woke up at 1:30, all of my corals were doing great as well as my crabs and other creatures, but my Mandarin has slime over it and was still on my rocks. It died
I took the fish back with a water sample at around 3:30
They tested the water at Petland- everthing was normal except for the pH which was around 7.0. Thish shocked me as it was completely fine two days before. I went home to compare their results with my test kits. I tested three water sources which were as follows:
-tank water with lights on: 8.2
-Refugium water with lights off: 8.4
-New water that I use for water changes: 7.8ish
I took these three samples with me and their results with a different test kit was the same.
The head of the fish department told me that it would be impossible for my pH to change that much in less than 1.5 hours. That seemed to be true at the time. He aid that he believed I added buffer to my tank, then took another sample and was lieing to him. I most certaintly did not do this, but I could see where this was comming from. Could my water have changed from a pH of 7 to 8 in less than two hours naturally? What if I carried the old water in a closed bag? Could that change the pH lower?

Thanks for the input.

[Mafiaman]

Acidics will lower PH, is the stining stuff from a BTA acidic? I don't know, I would guess Yes.
This being said, a system being shocked like that would bounce back to the original PH quickly.
And the oposite is true, using a buffer to raise PH will raise it, for a short time then the tank will fall back to where it was in a short peroid of time.

PH will always return to the PH maitained by the buffering abilitys of the tank.
Sand + Rock + alkalinity (borate and carbonate) = PH

hope this helps

[sally]

You mentioned that you did a four gallon water change...what size tank was this?

[BRI690]

Originally Posted by sally

You mentioned that you did a four gallon water change...what size tank was this?

10g tank
4.5g refugium
-----
Around 15 gallons if I add the water capacity of the filter

[BRI690]

What I don't understand if that 12 hours after the anenome died the pH was 7, and then 2 hours after that it was 8. Why would it take so long for the buffer to pick up the pH?

[Mafiaman]

To be Honest Brian, one of two things:
1) You went home and buffered it up (You said you didn't)
2) The guy at the store screwed the first test up, either to prevent the refund or an honest mistake.

My vote is #2

[BRI690]

Originally Posted by Mafiaman

To be Honest Brian, one of two things:
1) You went home and buffered it up (You said you didn't)
2) The guy at the store screwed the first test up, either to prevent the refund or an honest mistake.

My vote is #2

1] nope - I wouldn't even consider doing that. But my question that then arises is - if my pH was truly at 7.0, how could everything else that is pH sensitive like corals or my lobster not have been affected

2] I double checked the water that I originally brought to the store with my own test kit that I brought when I brought in my second water sample.


Is the mucus secretion of a mandarin acidic?

[Melissa]

Hey, Brian,
You're probably going to have trouble with a mandarin in that small a tank. I would definitely recommend doing some research on these fish. Very infrequently you can find one that will eat prepared foods. Your tank is very young to add one that will not and too small to sustain a mandarin which will not eat prepared foods.

Sorry for the negative feedback unrelated to your questions. I think you would do fine with a mandarin if you had a mature larger tank.

Melissa

[BRI690]

Hey Melissa-


I added a refugium about a week ago. I ordered 1,000 copepods from a place that cultures them in Virginia. I figured that this would help setting up my refugium and I figured that I could always keep adding more pods until I had a firm population that could keep reproducing without me having to add more. It seems to be working fine...

[tdwyatt]

Originally Posted by Mafiaman

To be Honest Brian, one of two things:
1) You went home and buffered it up (You said you didn't)
2) The guy at the store screwed the first test up, either to prevent the refund or an honest mistake.

My vote is #2

Third option: CO2 levels were high in the tank due to decomposing anemone flesh, and/or accumulation of CO2 in the water change ASW. Heterotrophic bacteria consume the carbon from the anemone's flesh and metabolize it to CO2. If the lights were off and the system has low circulation and surface area (it IS a 10 gllon tank), CO2 would accumulate, especially with any of the following:

• no lights or low light
• poor surface exchange due to lids or a hood
• low alkalinity
• DSB with the new nutrient load
• CO2 accumulation in the ASW added for the water change

I can very easiliy see this happening, your LFS guy is not what I would generally consider knowledgable in water chemistry nor testing methodology, and test results can vary widely depending on brand, age of kit, methodology, and interpretaional errors for color matching for those types of kits. There are only a few places in town that I would depend on the results of one of the LFS folks doing the test, if it was Petland, that would NOT be one of them.

However, using seawater that has been stored without surface agitation and good circulation is a very possible source of the problem. ASW stored under these conditions will have a tendency to accumulate carbon dioxide, driving the pH down, especially if it was made with RO/DI fiotered water to start with. Alwawys make your seawater with a decent submersible pump placed in the bottom of the barrel to make good surface turbulance. It should push water at the bottom of the barrel to the surface when correctly placed and make a general swrl in the barrel.. A good Mag 5 or 9 placed in the bottom of a 45G Rubbermaid is usually suffieicnt with a 200 W Ebo-Jager to condition freshly made ASW and to warm it up to tank temps for use in an established system. Dong this 24 hours before the actual use will fully develope the carbonate/bicarbonate buffer system and bring dissolved gasses to equilibrium with the room air, assure completion of salt mix dissolution, create a uniformly mixed product, and assure appropriate temps when performing the water change.


I can easily envision a scenario where this set of events could happen, especially once the new water was mixed and circulated with the water already in the tank. Adequate circulation would allow for degassing of the water change water to drop CO2 concentration and begin the increases in pH, and hood removal or lid removal to perform the chnges would allow for a good surface exchange as well, reducing any accumulation of CO2 in the main display resulting in a relatively rapid increase in pH.

btw, Mandarins go into a torpor sleep at night and wrap themselves in a mucus cocoon to evade detection in the water column while they sleep, when you find a mandarin in this condition, always allow for 12 to 20 hours to pass before assuming that the creature is dead. In the absence of obvious decomposition or fin rot, etc, the specimen may still be alive, even if the water column is badly fouled (this may in some circumstances CAUSE the mandarin to form its protective cocoon)


HTH

[tdwyatt]

Originally Posted by BRI690

I added a refugium about a week ago. I ordered 1,000 copepods from a place that cultures them in Virginia. I figured that this would help setting up my refugium and I figured that I could always keep adding more pods until I had a firm population that could keep reproducing without me having to add more. It seems to be working fine...

Not to pick on you when you've already lost the specimen, but trying to maintain a mandarin in such a small tank is not in the fish's best interest. If you drop husbandry for a period of time, or if the source of your copepods should dry up, then the fish will most likely not pick up on dried or frozen foods. Minimally, you need about 3 to 4 Sq ft of substrate with adequate rock cover and vegitatiion to keep enough copepods to feed a single mandarin specimen. Unless your refugium is quite large, I doubt that it il be able to produce enough food for the mandarin to prevent its demise. I trust you are not planning on replacing this specimen unless your plans include a larger tank.