Clown loach PH concern

[ShadowBass]

oh yeah.. i am able to adjust PH okay the way it is.... It takes about 3 tbls of PH down (acid) to change PH one point in my 140... that doesn't seem like too much chem for the volume, does it?

Test your kH. It may temporarily change it but do you know how long it stays down before it bounces back? If you have a lot of buffering it will go back up again overnight or within a couple of days which is really bad for the fish. If you have so little buffering that pH down is consistently dropping your pH that's almost worse because it means you won't be able to reliably keep your pH stable, it could drop off the charts.

RO (reverse osmosis) water is filtered so that it's essentially pure. It doesn't contain any buffering, minerals or chemicals like chlorine and the TDS is at 0 or around there depending on the efficiency of the unit. With RO you have to add buffering back in so your pH doesn't fluctuate in your aquarium. You can either use something like RO right which is a powder that you add a certain amount of to get the desired hardness/pH and rebuffer, or you can mix with tapwater or waste water in the right ratio until you get it where you want it.

 

[toehead11183]

i keep my CLs with my african cichlids. The highest they did well in was 8.2. i keep it around 7.9-8.0 now. i added lots of driftwood too.

 

[ewurm]

Many of the larger clown loaches I have seen in tank with high carbonate hardness appear to have mineral deposit buildup on their bodies.

 

[spiff]

Will increasing carbon filterization help any of this? I have a gigantic sump with room to put much more carbon filterization...

This seems cheaper and easier than going with an RO filter...

 

[spiff]

Well, did some research and found extra carbon won't help a bit. Guess I'm going to bite it and put an RO thing behind my drip...

Thanks for the help on this...

 

[spiff]

Okay..actually after doing more research, i'm no longer certain on this carbon thing. Looking at all the RO filters, usually 2/3's of the cartridges are carbon with one membrane... so if carbon is doing most the work, by can't i just add more to my sump?

Any thoughts on this?

 

[ewurm]

Carbon will not remove most dissolved solids.

 

[spiff]

I went ahead and ordered a 100gpd RO filter.. it hurt, but guess I don't have any worries now... other than the bill.

 

[sardesign]

will CO2 injection make a difference? I have tap water that runs about PH 7.2. With CO2 injection on a 100 gallon tank with a mazzei injector running 2 bubbles per second, I get a PH drop to approximately 6.4 and it maintains at that level. 50% water changes only bring it up to about 6.8.

I once read something from Tom Barr mentioning that PH itself doesn't really affect the fish, it's the salts and minerals in the water that will affect them. If so, I would imagine the Carbonic acid from CO2 wouldn't make a difference.

 

[spiff]

Using CO2 to for no other reason than to lower PH doesn't sound right. I'm trying to simplify the setup as much as possible. CO2 generators are maintenance, either refilling the tank or the fuel for the generator.
But I guess if one was into plants and not fish, it might be viable...