Hey everyone. I recently did a complete water change on my tank and changed out the substrate and decorations. The tank had been running for about a year and a half prior to that but the substrate that we had was a petty ugly florescent yellow and at the urging of my wife ("urging" might be a mild way of putting it
) I finally had to beak down and change it so it looked a bit more presentable.
So off I went to redecorate my tank. I picked out some new substrate and few new decorations. So it's been about two weeks now since I set the tank back up. I've been doing partial water changes every 2 to 3 days in an effort to keep the ammonia levels down but I noticed that my Ph went from about 7.3 in the old set up to about 8.0. I started thinking about why this was happening then it occurred to me that I used crushed coral for the new substrate with out even realizing it. Is this the most likely reason for the elevated Ph or is it more so to do with the tank being new (new water that is)? Should I even be concerned with it being at 8.0 as it is fairly stable at that and if I should be concerned what should I do to correct it. I was thinking a small piece of drift wood might be enough to counter the evaluated Ph but I'm not sure that will work. I want to try to avoid using chemical fixes as the tank water is still cycling and I'm afraid that adding more chemicals will just stressing the fish and end up not being effective in the end.
Brief description of my set up:
20 gallon tank
3 goldfish (One Ryukin and two Oranda's)
Fluval 105 filter with Carbon, Ammonia Remover, polishing pad and Bio max.
and I'm not sure what else to tell ya.
Any help would be appreciated.
Oh one other question, I've been taking my ammonia readings and I've noticed that I can't seem to get them down even after partial water changes. I've read that using Ammonia removers such as the one I'm using in my filter can some times throw off your the test results. Is this true or am I just going through a regular tank set up problem with the ammonia spiking? As I mentioed about it's only been 2 weeks since I did a complete water change so while this is expected I am still a bit concerned.