Low PH and High Nitrate

[PeacockBass]

The process of nitrification produces acid which will lower your ph. The problem with doing a massive water change for you is that it will drastically alter your ph. I would recomend doing about a 20% change daily for a week. The next week do 40% daily.The third week get in the habbit of changing 50% every 3 or 4 days. You could probablly get bye with a massive water change once a week if you buffer the water with each change. You need to keep the nitrates low while maintaining a stable ph.

Most fish can easily overcome the fluctuation in PH.

 

[searcyb]

ph is not as important as getting the nitrite levels in tack. You want to stay away from the test strips because they are not accurate at all. I recomend getting a liquid nitrite tester. if your nitrites are high you need to do a massive water change ~50% at first then smaller water changes to lower the nitrite levels as well. I have used a product called Prime to get my levels in check. I would recomend finding it online from a store rather than going to your local petco or petsmart because they will charge you an arm and a leg for it. But if you are in an emergency situation then go for it. The other thing is that it is ok, in an emergency situation, to add up to 5x the amount recomended for tank treatment if you use the Prime.

this helped my tank and helped save my fish.

 

[rweedon]

yes a pound of crushed coral will keep your ph higher and rinse off you filter cartridges with tank temp. water... this will help keep a lot of your beneficial nitrifine bacteria when the cartridge starts to break down then you can change it... and I am not going to start another smaller water change more often vs. larger less often but just keep in mind how drastically you would change all of the levels in less than a half an hour and how much that can stress the fish... smaller change more often...