PH Maintenance

havnfun328

havnfun328

AC Members
Sep 11, 2006
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Kansas
My tank's been up for over a year, but I still feel like a noob!

How often do you add buffer to keep the PH at 8.2? It seems like I have to add a teaspoon or so about every other week at least. Last week I noticed it had dropped to 7.8, so I've been adding 1-2 tespoons every day to bring it back up.

Is this normal?
 
I'm probably not being very consistent about that. Does it fluctuate much from day to night?
 
PH will usually drop during the night time due to a decreased amount of dissolved oxygen in the water. Some people setup refugiums on a reverse lighting schedule to help maintain a more steady PH.

Personally I don't think adding supplements to buffer the PH is a good idea, you will constantly be adding buffer and it will get to be a lot of effort and cost for you and not great for your system either as it will rise and fall with each buffer administration.

Take a look at this article to understand PH and get to the bottom of your chronic low PH problems.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/index.php
 
drobes said:
Personally I don't think adding supplements to buffer the PH is a good idea, you will constantly be adding buffer and it will get to be a lot of effort and cost for you and not great for your system either as it will rise and fall with each buffer administration.
Click to expand...
Adding an UNBALANCED supplement (such as most "buffers") to a tank is not good, as one would then end up with a very low calcium level. Adding a BALANCED supplement, such as dripping lime water (Kalkwasser) or any of the two compound additives (adding alkalinity AND calcium) is absolutely necessary, and all serious reef keepers do it (at least everyone who does not use a calcium reactor...).

If your tank's calcium and alkalinity demand is not too high, your best bet to increase pH is by dripping limewater - just be aware that it can increase the pH quite drastically, so do some reading/research on dripping Kalkwasser.

Hennie
 
I drip kalk water and my ph stays nice and even, there are the normal day night differences but it is steady from day to day.
 
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