LOW PH please help

[12 Volt Man]

I read through this thread and I didn't see how often (and how much) of water changes were done on this tank. Could you give this info again? thanks.

I used to battle low pH in some of my old tanks, but they were super heavily stocked with oversized fish, and the weekly water changes I was doing did not keep up with the pH drop from all the fish waste. it was classic 'old tank syndrome'.

I was able to remedy the pH drop with a bag of crushed coral in my Aquaclear...

but I agree, this bioload is not normally enough to cause this kind of problem, especially if regular water changes are being performed.

but none the less it is happening. a bag of crushed coral in the filter may be all that is needed to provide enough buffer to the water to prevent the pH from dropping.

this assumes of course that the test results are accurate. is it an old test kit?

 

[hybridtheoryd16]

Driftwood will bring the pH down in a hurry meanwhile crushed coral/shells will raise the pH. I am having the exact opisite of your problem, pH out of the tap here is 8.0 or so, no problem, i threw some driftwood in, 2 weeks later, 2 water changes later, the pH is 7.4. I want it at about 7.0. Becareful though, low pH is ammonium instead of ammonia, this doesn't feed the good bacteria rendering the beneficial bacteria useless, if the beneficial bacteria doesn't have any ammonia to consume than it doesn't have any nitrite to consume, so for those very reasons, the bacteria will die, and by the time you get your pH up, you will have to restart your cycle process. But this is at very low pH levels ( 6.0 and lower )

Ammonium is consumed by your bio-filter the same as ammonia. Ammonium is just allmost completely harmless to fish. Where ammonia is highly toxic.

This is how water conditioners that remove ammonia work. They turn toxic ammonia in non-toxic ammonium for a period of time to give the bio-filter a chance to catch up. Before the fish are harmed/killed.

 

[DavidZ]

What is your GH, as stated let the tap water sit and then take a mesurement, also test your kit.
You will need to raise your GH, in NY I had to add corral or just baking soda to the water that i was adding to the tank.
Your choice which way you want to go.
40-50% water changes.

 

[yzf450motoxrider]

hey guys thanks for all the help. I think i found the problem i haddent cleaned the xp3 in about 2 months. but i had been keeping up on all the tank maintnence. when i took the filter apart yeasterday it was horrible algae everywhere layer of decomposing waste about 1 inch thick on the bottom of the filter. everything in the filter was cloged with algae and fish poop. you would never know it with how clean i kept the tank looking. So i will be monitering the PH over the next few days and we'll see what happens.
Thanks again!

 

[yzf450motoxrider]

i do a 50% water change every 4 days and the PH is still unstable

 

[exoticfishguy]

Put a bag of crushed coral in your canister and regularly clean both the tank and filter.

 

[JakeH]

Yup. Crushed coral. You may also want to **whisper** back off on the WC's or try some plants or a planted sump.

 

[nfored]

Crushed coral may fix it. Or it may not, crushed coral has shown no detectable affect on my tanks.

When I lived in Charlotte NC and my water had little to no KH and slightly low PH... Crushed coral in the filters caused the PH to jump up to around 8.0 very quickly.

While I do believe there are situations where a little bit of crushed coral in teh filter will be the answer, I do not believe it is a safe solution to every situation....

I had this same problem, and I corrected it by putting in rock that used to be live rock from a reef tank. I let the rock dry out, and then used a bucket to soak it like I was removing tannins from driftwood. This kept my pH around 7.8. I know this worked because living in the same location using the same filter same fish, only larger tank; I have this problem again after having removed the rock, mainly because I forgot that's why I was using it.

LOLZ

My bad sorry my search got messed up didn't mean to bring this back to life.

 

[NOLAGT]

I know you said your PH out the tap is 7.something....have you tried to let the tap water sit overnight with a airstone and see what the PH is after. I am running into a problem now that my PH out the tap is 5.5 but after overnight airstone its 7.6. I think it can work in the other direction too....

 

[Pomatomus]

An aerator would remove any building of CO2 in the water, which causes acidity, but I don't think that's the problem.

As stated before, just grab some calcium carbonate (aragonite) sand/gravel and add it to your tank. That should buffer it pretty well. I believe you can get it for very cheap if you buy the stuff for chicken feed (they call it limestone). You just have to wash it a lot. Makes for a very cheap alternative and I have used it for years!