Poor Shrimpies :(

I really am a silly person sometimes. I got home from work today and saw that our fish tank was in peril. We've been having trouble lately with the pH continuously dropping off the scale , and we could not figure out why. It has been driving us insane because our shrimp, which are our favorite little critters, cannot deal with changes in the pH. The bottom of the tank kept turning into a shrimp graveyard, and we have been starting to freak out. Our baby cherry shrimp are precious to us, so when I saw that the bottom of the tank was littered with dead shrimp, I flipped out! Rather than waiting for Tim to come home and deal with it, I dropped my bag on the floor, grabbed the pH test kit, and tried to find the right instructions. I took the hood off the tank to get some water in the test tube, and didn't realize til 15 seconds or so later that it was pumping water all over the desk. Chaos ensued and the end result is that when Tim came home, I was in the middle of cleaning up a very big mess. He got right back on his bike, headed over to the fish store, and bought another kind of buffer that would raise the pH. We spent some time mixing and playing with water in a pitcher, and then we fixed the pH of our tank. So now, instead of only lowering the pH, we are now creating a valley for the pH to settle by placing both buffers to lower the pH and increase the pH and hardness. We spent a few good hours fixing everything up, and now our fish tanks seem much more stable. We still have a good amount of shrimp though, so hopefully they can survive.

For fun photos of some fishies and shrimpies, check out Tim's picasa! The album is here.