baking soda good for neutralizing pH?

E

evedamnededen

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Apr 6, 2006
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the pH in my aquarium dropped down to 5, other than that all other params are normal (ammonia and nitrites are 0 and nitrates are 3)would adding baking soda to my aquarium work?. its a 10 gal with 2 guppies in it.
If it should work, how should I put it in the tank?
 
Baking soda will raise your pH and add carbonate hardness to the water. (It is a KH buffer). If you have very soft water, it will make it harder faster. So, start small 1/4 teaspoon (or less), per 10g. Monitor carefully as larger than .2 swings in pH can be fatal to your fish.

You can also add crushed coral to your tank, either by mixing it with your substrate, or by adding a bag of it to your filter box. This would be a way to slowly change your hardness a bit... But, it might not add enough to keep your pH stable with out some help.

There are 2 products on the market which might help, Kents ph Stable, and Kents ph reducer or in your case increaser. These are buffering products designed to stabilze soft water.

Cathy
 
What was the pH before? What is the pH of your replacement water?
 
pH of the tank was 5, I just took some tank water out and mixed very little baking soda in, waited an hour, and then the pH of the mixture was at 8. Then I poured half of the mixture into the tank, in an hour it went up to 6, an then waited 2 more hours just to be safe before adding the rest of the mixture. Then this morning, I tested the water again, pH is at 7, and then 3 more hours later, pH is still at 7 and the fish have returned to normal behavior and colors.
 
I have had a similar problem and had success using baking soda to raise the pH level. The baking soda will raise the kH of the water, which in turn will help raise the pH level if the tap water you use is higher than the pH level in your tank. I can't explain the details, but someone on here pointed me to this link a while back: http://www.drhelm.com/aquarium/chemistry.html

Just be sure to go a bit at a time, because a major pH swing will greatly stress your fish.
 
playing with the water chemistry of your tank is alot more complicated than just adding baking soda. you want to figure out WHY your pH is so low and fix THAT problem, otherwise you'll create an instability which will seriously stress your fish and may kill them.

what's the pH, gH and kH of your TAP water?
 
I don't know the gH and kH of my tap water, but it was more acidic lately because they shut off all the water in my building to do repairs for a day, but it takes a day or two for it to become neutral again. This same thing happened last summer, but I got some water from my neighbor who lives across the street and that helped.
 
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