Distilled Water to Lower pH/kH

[jm1212]

baking soda will not raise the pH indefinitely. you will eventually see another crash if you do not keep up on water changes. distilled water will actually make this worse as it does not have any real buffering capacity or hardness. use your tap water as you normally would with water changes and your tank will turn out much healthier.

also, i dont think it was "bad amquel" that made your tank's pH crash. there are plenty of other reasons, including not changing enough water and an overstocked tank.

 

[MattS]

The most baking soda can raise pH is 8.2 or 8.4 so if your pH is above that you have something else funky in your water (I'd suspect your test kit is wrong?). How long has this tank been set up? Not to insult you but 20% water change a month is not going to be adequate for maintenance of a tank unless it's really lightly stocked with fish and has lots of plants. Your description of your crisis sounds alot like a tank that has crashed due to build up of organic acids and exhaustion of carbonate buffer.

Anyway, distilled water can be used to soften water. I'd suggest monitoring the kH of your tank closely and would probably use distilled water mixed with tap. And increase the frequency of changes to bring your kH down more.

Not an insult at all, I think it's quite possible I was a victim of "old tank syndrome" since I wasn't monitoring kh. The tank has been set up for more than five years. I may have just gotten away with it for that long because the tank is thoroughly planted and has not generally had a lot of fish. (For what it's worth, the 20% per month isn't hard and fast, and I do sometimes change or add some water mid-month; the 20% per month is the minimum.)

Regardless, the tank WAS stable until this recent crash, which I strongly suspect was bad AmQuel -- it smelled like AmQuel, and the crash happened right after a water change.

I'm not sure where the pH was, since my test kit tops out at 7.6. It was substantially darker than the top reading, so I guesstimated it at 9.0 ish. Since posting this morning, I've changed in some distilled, and the pH is now about 7.4. The kH is still high, but I'm going to give it a week or so before I do anything else. I don't want to end up in a seesaw.

Thank you for the advice!

 

[MattS]

baking soda will not raise the pH indefinitely. you will eventually see another crash if you do not keep up on water changes. distilled water will actually make this worse as it does not have any real buffering capacity or hardness. use your tap water as you normally would with water changes and your tank will turn out much healthier.

also, i dont think it was "bad amquel" that made your tank's pH crash. there are plenty of other reasons, including not changing enough water and an overstocked tank.

Well, I obviously don't know for sure, but I have seen a number of people on this board and elsewhere warn that old AmQuel can cause chemistry problems. And when I got rid of that AmQuel and switched to another additive, the problem stopped. Shrug.

One thing I'm sure of is this isn't an overstock problem; it's a 40-gallon tank that during the time in question had about five fish on board.

 

[MattS]

Yeah, definitely go with the distilled water. It sounds like you've got an excess of sodium to bicarb in the tank. The sodium will raise the pH as the bicarb is depleted, so a pH of 9.0 is well within the realm of possibility, and with a kH of 125 out of the tap, you don't need much additional HCO3 hanging around to send the kH off the chart.

Are you using well water?

Thanks. No, it's just tap water in Oakland, California. Treated with AquaSafe.

 

[MattS]

ya low KH might crash your ph if it ever happens to drop that low, test your test kit on the distilled to make sure its not a whack kit

That's a good idea; I'll probably get a new kit that tests higher in any case. Thanks.

 

[Oscars]

High PH & Ammonia

All electrolytes in water ionize to give positive and negative ions. Out of these ions some are strong and some are weak. Sodium ion is very strong compared to NH4+ (Ammonium ion) So it will displace this as Ammonia in the water.
If you can recall, what other changes happened when you added Baking soda, that could help.
Adding distilled water (Better yet RO water) can help dilute every thing in your tank. But will not help building N Cycle bacteria. Your PH ammonia combination needs to be watched. Fish can tolerate Ammonia better in a lower pH than at alkaline pH

 

[MattS]

All electrolytes in water ionize to give positive and negative ions. Out of these ions some are strong and some are weak. Sodium ion is very strong compared to NH4+ (Ammonium ion) So it will displace this as Ammonia in the water.
If you can recall, what other changes happened when you added Baking soda, that could help.
Adding distilled water (Better yet RO water) can help dilute every thing in your tank. But will not help building N Cycle bacteria. Your PH ammonia combination needs to be watched. Fish can tolerate Ammonia better in a lower pH than at alkaline pH

I really appreciate the detailed explanation!

I added nothing but baking soda at the time, but was doing daily water changes to try and save fish. Basically I was panicking. So (assuming the AmQuel was the problem) I had bad AmQuel + baking soda.

In the past, I have occasionally thrown in a tablespoonful of aquarium salt, which I have long been told is a nice tonic for fish. I haven't done that in a long time, however.

My ammonia has been at zero, as have nitrites. I've been testing several times a week for a couple of months now. Once I concluded my "new stable" had a very high kh and ph, I decided to try the distilled water. Now I plan to continue testing every few days to see what the "new, NEW stable" turns out to be.

Is there anything else you think I should be watching?

By the way, this board is a great community; I really appreciate the many helpful responses.

 

[Oscars]

Watching the ammonia and pH should take care of your fish eco system. Make frequent 10% WC instead of 50% WC weeks apart. IMHO, twice a week if you do not see threatening levels of ammonia. If you do, then it deserves a bigger WC.
You may see some fish loss - god forebid, but that may be after effect of earlier stress.

I really appreciate the detailed explanation!

I added nothing but baking soda at the time, but was doing daily water changes to try and save fish. Basically I was panicking. So (assuming the AmQuel was the problem) I had bad AmQuel + baking soda.

In the past, I have occasionally thrown in a tablespoonful of aquarium salt, which I have long been told is a nice tonic for fish. I haven't done that in a long time, however.

My ammonia has been at zero, as have nitrites. I've been testing several times a week for a couple of months now. Once I concluded my "new stable" had a very high kh and ph, I decided to try the distilled water. Now I plan to continue testing every few days to see what the "new, NEW stable" turns out to be.

Is there anything else you think I should be watching?

By the way, this board is a great community; I really appreciate the many helpful responses.

 

[froglover007]

Peat filtration will have a similar effect. The only downside to this is that it stains the water tea colored and some people don't like that.

 

[froglover007]

That is only if you still want the ph down.