Need help desperately : ph crash again.

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batang_mcdo

Polypterus
MFK Member
Apr 24, 2006
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Really sorry to start a new thread. but desperately need help.
was able to maintain my tanks ph at 7.5 for a few days. but earlier today after my water change and taking home 2 used sponge filter from lfs and squeezing them in my sump tank. my ph crashed again. currently at 4.5 or below. i added lots of baking soda bring it to 5 :(
now i'm really desperate. its night time here i'm afaraid my tanks ph might drop again during the night?

i have 6 kilos of crushed corals in my sump tank.
our tap waters kh is 3, ph is 7.5

earlier i made 50% water change. now trying to keep my tanks ph up :( using baking soda. but i'm worried that it will crash again when i go to sleep:(
badly need advice please help .
 
Generally, very little baking soda is required to maintain the pH...it sounds like you're dumping in buckets of the stuff. Also, the rapidity of the pH decrease and the extent of the pH decrease is something that I have never encountered, nor heard of. Please refresh my memory regarding the method you are using to to determine the pH.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that perhaps your equipment is causing electrolysis. There is a subreaction (below) in which H+ is present transiently. Maybe this is the source of the H+.

2H2O(l) → O2(g) + 4H+(aq) + 4e−;
 
Seems to me that you do not listen to advice or questions asked. First, in your other thread someone had asked you your tank dimensions. Instead of actually troubleshooting the issue you want an instant fix. If this tank is cycling, (which I am absolutely positive it is now, since you have removed some of your bio filtration and you have washed your other filtration) then you will have to do nearly continuous water changes to keep ammoia and nitrates in check. You can't add buffers to a tank whose buffers are already taxed out. It was not your filter, it was not the ceramic rings, buffers haven't helped, ammo lock doesn't help.. are you getting the picture yet? Your tank suffered a PH Crash due to overloading your buffers and bio colony. You then killed your bio colony and added an abundance of buffers that cannot work because there is no bio colony. Now you want instant relief... sorry, I do not feel sorry for you in any way for your predicament. Do the hard work and do water changes.. lots of them.. for a long time... add tons of bio filtration... continue to do water changes.. and more.. and more.. then once your tank finally re-cycles you'll have to keep up on maintainence and do water changes some more.. Or just get rid of your fish
 
:grinno:

I agree with the above.

I posted in one of your other threads and helped explain why you are having severe pH crashes (on top of what Rivermud had already explained to you) and it seems you've posted even more threads asking the exact same questions.

I suggest you go reasearch first:
What is cycling a tank? What are biological bacteria? Where do biological bacteria live (the answer wold be in your filters...which is why you don't remove any of your filtration or media)? Why are biological bacteria important?

Next you need to research water chemistry. Research pH, gH, kH and how they interact with each other. I think this link was already posted, can't remember:
http://www.drhelm.com/aquarium/chemistry.html

I think this was already mentioned but ammonia is an acid, pH is a scale of how acidic or basic your water is. If you add acid to water the pH will drop. Low pH = more acidic. High pH = less acidic. A pH of 7 is neutral (neither acidic nor basic). Anything lower than 7 is acidic. Anything higher than 7 is basic.

Now...again...ammonia is an ACID. By adding ammonia to your tank you drop your pH. Once your buffering capacity is gone the pH will continue to drop the more acid (ammonia) that you add. Since your tank is not cycled nothing is removing the ammonia except YOU. So your fishes waste is adding more and more ammonia causing your pH to drop off the charts.

Even nitrites or nitrates can drop pH in water that is very poorly buffered. You stated that your kH is 3, that is not high buffering. That's high enough in a WELL MAINTAINED aquarium to keep the pH from crashing usually, but you are cycling an aquarium so you have excess acids being added to your water.
I don't think I saw how long your tank had been setup, but even if it was a well established aquarium if you hadn't been doing proper water changes THAT is why your pH dropped off the charts and killed off your biological bacteria, along with anything else you may have had adding acids to your water (such as driftwood).
 
Seeding your filter was a great idea. Not everyone is a veteran ;) The detritus from the filter still shocked your bioload. Think of it like this. too keep fish healthy you need 100% bio, you were probably at 50% bio and the more you mes with it you are steadily loosing points. Seeding your filter brought it back to 75% but the added ammonia brought it back down to 50%< At this point I suggest you leave the tank alone and just test for the next week.....Report back please...
 
Are you treating your water? You seem to have a PH crash after you change the water. Also, I never buffer water unless it is RO/DI. While the buffer may be known, you don't know what is coming out of the tap.
 
So after looking at a bunch of his previous posts and topics. He has no fish but lost his aro probably because of the ammonia. Pull everything out. Drain the tank, and start over.

I think you are not conditioning your water and your tap water has tons of chloramine in it.
 
He has loads of issues. This first and foremost is a lack of tank maintainence with an extremely heavily loaded tank. This caused his first crash since his buffers could no longer coutneract the decomposing material and ammonia added to the water from fish, food, and possibly plant life. His first steps to rectify his problem were to use Ammo Lock and add coralines to increase his buffering. The problem being that since his PH was already at a severely low state his ammonia was extreme, yet non toxic;the ammo lock was useless as it does not remove ammonia, only locks it up.. it still reads and when you add buffers to that equationit only serves to possibly and for a short period raise his ph back up by buffering the acids already in the tank allowing a release of ammonia to toxicity. Thus re-stressing the fish. The acids were still there and will immediately overcome the buffers. He then proceeded to wash his bio media in his sump from what i can tell.. killing the bio colony or nitrosomas. Then, still looking for a quick fix kept adding buffers to the tank. His last step was to remove the canister filter because he assumed ceramic rings could cause a ph crash, killing off that colony. He now has a tank that is guaranteed re-cycling. Had he actually wanted to heed any advice instead of looking for a quick way out he would be doing a few water changes until he slowly brought the acids down to a point where they could be buffered again, and then he could address his other issues of overloading and otherwise.. now he gets to sit and change water.. period.. His tap water had worked fine previously.. and the only other option to look at period would be the one guess at electrolosis.. I just think it looks like a very classic case of "Old Tank Syndrome". Pardon my "Veteran" attitude.. he had several opportunities to heed advice before and he is still looking for a quick fix.
 
"Ammonia" is not an acid...."ammonium" is the acid form and the pKa is 9.4, which is too high to account for the degree of acidification that he is reporting. Also, he reported an ammonium conc. of only 5 ppm. I agree that a "biological" cause is the most likely, but I sense that there is a big chunk of missing info. here. RM's directive is to start from scratch with a robust filtration system and that seems to be the most reasonable thing to do, given the circumstances.
 
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