Fish is 30 gallon rubbermaid

[ocikitty]

While waiting for my tank to be finished being drilled, I have placed my regal tang, engineer goby and small chromis in a 30 gal tub and have been treating them with para guard since two of them had ich. They have been in there since last Thurs. Yesterday I did a 5 gal water change. Today I did a 12 gallon change since my readings were sky high. I put ammo lock in a few days ago and again yesterday. I tested after the change and the ammonia is at 0 but the nitrites and nitrates are still up, the nitrates are at 10 ppm., hard to read the nitrites (it is the red sea kit and the color is pink but that color is not on the chart:notsure: ) The water is real cloudy and I added some charcoal and phosguard. I am using the coral life salt. My ph is now at 8.2, when I tested today before change it was very low. Does it drop that fast from 8.2 yesterday to about 7.6 in one day? I have a powerhead, heater and a penguin filter only for water movement. I did seed the bottom of the tub with a thin layer of substrate from tank.
What should I be doing differently?

 

[ocikitty]

Anyone....Anyone.....Bueller?

 

[lion_crazz]

Originally posted by ocikitty
Anyone....Anyone.....Bueller?
hahaha

Anyways, it sounds like everything you are doing is okay so far. I would probably pick up a little Turbo Start to add some bacteria to the tub where they are residing to decrease the nitrites and add more biological to the tub.
Plus, I would probably get a small thing of Kent Marine Super dkH buffer in order to stabilize the pH. The pH can definitely fluctuate like that if the kH is too low in the water. Thus, the super dkH buffer will raise the kH and stabilize the pH at or very close to 8.3.