pH 7.8!!

MQP hit the nail on the head when she said that a higher, stable pH is far more important than a lower, fluctuating one.

Most accomplished fish-keepers will tell you that adjusting your pH thru chemical additives will only prove temporary and will eventually become WAY more of a headache than it is worth. Yes, pH down will work for a few hours but if you test your water again the next day you will find that it is close to the originating pH once again. The end result of adding and adding chemicals to your water over time will be that they will eventually wreak havoc on the rest of your water chemistry and causing a tremendous algae bloom from all the added phosphates that additives bring, lowering water quality for your fish. It can prove to be a huge catch-22.

These chemicals will temporarily "fix" one problem while creating another one. You will hardly ever hear of an experienced fishkeeper that uses these additives, but instead will try more natural approaches such as peat first ... that is, "if" you insist on changing your pH at all. IMO, 7.8 is at the higher end of being normal and IMO the effort you will put into struggling with your pH just will not be worth it.
 
Okay ... tap water's coming out 7.2, but you KNOW it's going to be higher tomorrow when the CO2 has evaporated, etc. KH of 3 is measuring somewhere in a distant memory--which is strange, since I don't have a water hardness test kit. I think I might have had it done at an lfs--not sure. I could be wrong, too. But 3 does ring a bell ... I think I need to retest it, don't I.

I have two old, nice chunks of store-bought driftwood in there, and no rocks except the gravel--a dark colored, small grained "no-rinse" gravel bought from a well-known company (whose medium-brown gravel, by the way, which is NOT labeled as African cichlid mix, contains shell fragments ...). So no elements in the tank that I know of which would be raising the pH. Other ornaments include a medium-sized store-bought ceramic cave and castle.

"What is opposite limestone?" Say again? ...

I agree on the PhDown stuff. I've tried it in the past. Bounced right back up (that was at the other address, though ...)

So the solution is looking like peat. But I've heard that peat is unsteady and unreliable, because it fluctuates. True? I don't mind boiling it--and I'm already running Black Diamond activated charcoal, which I put in there a couple of days ago. (I've got an AquaClear 200 filter with a sponge and, now, the carbon. There's room for another filter media in there.)

Do I need to use peat pellets? Or just will "squishy" peat work? And I definitely hear you about fluctuating pH being a lot worse than just leaving it alone. But Blue Rams are my dream fish, and back when I had a smaller tank and hauling bottled water was a possibility, they were wonderful. I'd sure like to get that back, if I could. Which means lower pH. Which means ... peat?

THANK YOU and I await your replies with unabated interest ...

-- Pat
 
How can you have such a long thread of posts about lowering pH when no one knows CichlidWoman's alkalinity ("carbonate" hardness).

CichlidWoman, if you have hard water and are considering peat filtration to lower the pH, better buy it by the bale at a garden center and start a big peat bucket. Teaspoonfuls of pelletized peat in the filter won't have any effect except in quite soft water.

Peat is not unreliable because of a fluctuation of any kind. Soft (and "softened") water is more lightly buffered, therefore its pH can fluctuate.

With two pairs of Kribs already among the mixed community in this 38-gallon tank,however, it's not likely that Rams will get the peace and quiet they'd need to pair up. In fact. if just one of those pairs of Kribs start breeding, life will be strenuous for the other pair, and all the neighbors too!
 
Cichlid woman,

With a KH of 3, you will want to be very careful. This is going to prove to be a difficult balancing act for you if you add peat... if your KH is "truly" 3 - which I sincerely hope it is not, because it's going to be hard to keep your pH stable if it is. In other words, peat makes the water softer. Softer than a KH of 3 and it will be increasingly difficult to keep your water's pH stable in the face of the slightest changes in water chemistry. It will be very vulnerable to wide pH swings that can prove disastrous for your fish. If your KH is truly 3 then we "may" want to reevaluate the whole peat idea, so I would suggest that be your starting point and come back and post the results, if you would.

BTW... if we decide to go in the peat direction, I buy my peat at Home Depot's garden department... just make sure the bag says "100% organic" because this will mean that there have been no added chemicals or fertilizers that can harm your fish. As long as it is labelled as 100% organic it is perfectly safe for your fish. You add it by putting some in a mesh baggie (which you can also get at Home Depot in the Paint department - they are used for straining paint) and put it in your filter compartment with your sponges. It's a good idea to change it every couple of weeks. It is not necessary to use carbon with peat... I never found it to be beneficial in absorbing anything but excess medications.

In any case, post back the results of your hardness test and we will take it from there. :)

EDIT :
Oops, Wetman... we would've posted at the same time except I had to let my post sit while I got called away ! Looks like we were on the same wavelength ! :)
 
If your Kh actually is only 3 then just let the tank go for awhile.

the Ph will drop on its own from dissolved organics and other natural processes that take place.

you might want to filter your source water through peat before adding it to the tank. especially if you want to do larger scale water changes.
 
In CichlidWoman's first post she mentioned: I once tried Perfect pH and got substantial gray sludge on my filter, along with very cloudy water.. I'd say the precipitation she describes is normally a symptom of very high dissolved solids. Though you've later posted KH of 3 is measuring somewhere in a distant memory--which is strange, since I don't have a water hardness test kit., could we ask you to do a KH test?

The thing is, a KH of 3 (low) but a pH of 7.8 (moderately high) don't add up, Pat. You'd have to have very low levels of carbon dioxide in the water, say from many plants furiously photosynthesizing under very powerful lighting...

Alkalinity and pH and carbon dioxide are all dependent on one another.

famman states: You can try boiling the peat (fluval makes pellets), for 1 minute. Pour off the water and repeat. This removes a great deal of the brown, but not all, and the peat still works. But I'd say that the golden peat color comes from the dissolved humic substances like tannin, that are binding calcium and magnesium ions. This is the softening effect of peat. So I feel that famman is washing a lot of potential softening out of the peat. Nevertheless, as famman says It browns the water something fierce.
 
When I lived in Kansas City, my water was extremely hard (25 drops and no color change on my test kit so I decided I didn't really want to know just HOW hard it was). I was determined to keep my discus, so I set up a 29 gallon tank to hold nothing but pretreated water for water changes for my 55 gallon tank. I would add acid buffer every day for 3 days, let it stabilize for 2 days, then buffer it down one more time before using it for water changes, to a pH of 6.8. It was expensive, time consuming, and more than a wee bit obsessive of me, but it was effective also. I used that water to do the water changes on my spawning blue ram tank (10 gallon) also. Amazingly enough, the rams would raise 40 or 50 fry to free swimming in water that hard (then promptly eat them of course, grrr)

Here in Anchorage, our water is relatively soft, but is pretreated to a pH of 7.8 and relatively stable. I use a large garbage can and buffer the water still, but 2 days has it stable. Pretreating and aging water has been the only way I could keep blue rams healthy for any extended period of time. Discus are actually much easier for me to keep :)

Another method you could use, would be CO2 injection in your tank, if your tap water is coming out at 7.2. That would keep you from offgassing the CO2 in your tank and having the pH rise, but with your kH that low, you'd have to really monitor your pH. The buffering capacity could be exhausted and cause a major crash unless you added a small handful of coral to your filter, which will lead to still more of a balancing act.

Hope I didn't just confuse the issue more :)
Barbie
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom