water quality of the fry is terrific. As for pH, municipal water supplies are buffered high so that lead water pipes to not leach or dissolve lead into our drinking water. Most of the hobby guppies are descended from alkaline waters anyway.
Assuming that you don't dramatically change pH more than 1 point during water
changes,they are fine at 7.5 to 8. plus a lot. ;)
The biological processes behind the nitrogen cycle (you know this, but for the benefit of someone new - the bacterial break down of the very toxic ammonia to the merely toxic nitrites to the less toxic nitrates) will naturally drop pH.
The very waste products of the guppies - urine (released primarily through the gills by the way) and feces are also acidic and drop pH. Even a gradual shift to a pH of 9 can be endured, but lower than that is better.
Now the ammonia is very dangerous and even more so at a high pH. That may also be associated with the cloudiness - which can be bacteria blooming off of all that waste material You need to do more partial water changes if that ammonia is measurable. There are however a couple of other ways to deal with that.
See also Immediate Help, the sections on
New Tank/Cycling/Setting Up/Water Changing
Water (cloudy/green etc.)
A quick fix is to put a water treatment in there which will temporally bond the ammonia to the chemicals added. In time the ammonia will be released, so the other things suggested here need to be considered.
In a larger aquarium, one can put activated carbon in the filter and that will be effective for a couple to a few days in taking out ammonia, It will get "full" soon. There are also more expensive resins such as Polyfilter (and many more) which will absorb ammonia.
They even have these tiny sponge filters. You could put it in the 1-gallon. Maybe start it in your established tank and then move it over wet). See the Ken's Fish ad here.
What do you treat and "season" water (let water sit a day or 14) in? If you have no such containers (clean, soap-less, food-quality plastics are good) you do need to get one or more. A (or a couple) 1-gallon drinking water jugs will do. In fact, in an emergency, one can use that water for partial water changes. Just make sure that on the label that the bottler added calcium, magnesium and potassium compounds
to the RO water that they probably started with.
Then when you have used that water up, you can put a drop of your appropriate water conditioner and refill the container with Luke-warm water. Let it sit open a day so it can shed free nitrogen and carbon dioxide and absorb oxygen.
Ah... you have that other aquarium! Did you set up the one-gallon fry tank with water from your established tank? Did you add gravel from that established tank? Did you put plants in the 1-gallon? ALL of those things help import beneficial bacteria and kick-start your nitrogen
cycle.
If the ammonia is still measurable in the 1`-gallon and fine in the regular aquarium, could you carefully siphon almost all the water out of the 1-gallon and replace it with water from your bigger tank. That of course means that you then need to treat and add some more water to the big tank. :)
What are you feeding the fry? Are they able to clean it up in a minute or three? There should be no left over food rotting and contributing ammonia to that tank.
You probably know this, but it is better to feed a couple of tiny feedings, rather than one big one a day. Having a couple of mall ramshorn (pond) snails in there helps too. If the few become a zillion snails, that is a sure sign that one is dramatically over feeding their guppies.
Still it is easier to crush and toss snails (actually I feed extras to snail eating fishes) that to deal with cloudy water or dying guppies! :)
Another trick with that one gallon is to fill it with a plant like hornwort, Najas or even water sprite. It needs to be near light, but not so hot that the fish will cook. One still needs to to partial water changes once or twice a week. The smaller the fish "tank" the more unstable can be
the water chemistry.
Where they get an hour or two of sunlight and are under the fluorescent lights for 14-16 hours, I have wide-mouthed gallon jars of young livebearers where the water has turned deep (and sometimes Kelly) green.
I also raise small freshwater crustaceans called Daphnia - which make wonderful fish food. The Daphnia, in their culturing containers eat the greenwater. When things are running well, I'm gently pouring 1/2 of that greenwater every day or three through a fine meshed net into a clean
bucket. The net catches the wayward livebearer who is returned to the jar.
Then the jar is refilled with treated, seasoned water (around here it may sit anywhere from a day to a month).
If the fish in the jar are getting 2 or 3 50% water changes a week, that is a good thing. The protists in the water both feed on tiny food scraps and have chlorophyll in their bodies. When the light is right, they will multiply and turn the water green. Good greenwater usually absorbs and uses any excess ammonia from the fish.
When a Danish aquarist was flown in to the
Milwaukee-Chicago area to speak at a fish show, some mutual friends decided to take him to visit local people and their fish rooms. Mine was a mess and it was with a little embarrassment that I agreed to invite that party in. Although he was very gracious about it, I don't think he was at all impressed with my set-up.
The only thing, which that gentleman really got interested in, were a couple of those notoriously low-tech greenwater jugs with all their livebearers. Those were what he took photos of! ;)
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Immediate Help
