Depleted minerals!

[Barracuda-m]

hi all

I'm posting for a friend.

Some of her fish started looking sickly/acting wonky so she put them in a hospital tank.

She did some water tests and saw that everything was pretty much in order except for kH (?)

Turns out, her tank is depleted of calcium and magnesium. She did a water change, and cgecked her canister filter, and saw that it was full of snails.

Do snails deplete minerals in a tank? What else would cause this?

[sharuq1]

I don't know alot about this, but I had read that snails do use minerals for their shells, so I guess it could be possible.

[patrick]

hi all

I'm posting for a friend.

Some of her fish started looking sickly/acting wonky so she put them in a hospital tank.

She did some water tests and saw that everything was pretty much in order except for kH (?)

Turns out, her tank is depleted of calcium and magnesium. She did a water change, and cgecked her canister filter, and saw that it was full of snails.

Do snails deplete minerals in a tank? What else would cause this?

Hi

The KH does not measure calcium and magnesium (but those minerals are often, but not always, low when KH is low). For that you would need a GH test. In short, the KH tells you how good the buffer is. If the buffer is low, like in this case, the PH will not be very stable and can drop quickly. Fish can be very sensitive to drastic PH changes, so that could be the reason why the fish was acting wanky. What kind of water is she using?

Yes snails will deplete some minerals but it should not have a noticable effect.