Ph drop but nothing else has changed...?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Since you do 50% water change every week at the bare minimum for most tanks, that means you are discarding the dissolved minerals as well. The more water changes you do the better, but you will lose anything you've added to the water. While the crushed coral does continue to dissolve and buffer the water for quite some time, it will eventually lose its ability to buffer as the calcium carbonate is depleted. A more cost-effective solution might be baking soda. I only need about a teaspoon per five gallons to keep my pH from crashing between water changes.
 
So then, i can add baking soda with every water change once i know how much to add to get it nearer to 7.

Any idea how much a tsp per gallon it brings the PH up by?

I will be getting a 35g tank thatv i can add water to and preapre for the water change, it will be sat under the tank so once ready i can pump it straight into the main tank,
 
waynes world;4650567; said:
So then, i can add baking soda with every water change once i know how much to add to get it nearer to 7.

Any idea how much a tsp per gallon it brings the PH up by?

I will be getting a 35g tank thatv i can add water to and preapre for the water change, it will be sat under the tank so once ready i can pump it straight into the main tank,
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Suggestion : Keep the 35g as a hospital/quarantine tank. Go buy a rubbermaid tub for mixing your water in between WCs. Just a thought.
 
Crushed coral will buffer the tank for at least 10 years, maybe longer.
 
i keep crushed coral in ALL of my tanks, in the substrate, not the fine ground sandy stuff, but the larger stuff that you can actually see some of the shells. i've never had to change it or add to it in 5 years now. i just use the gravel vac to clean it out and stir it up. my PH runs around 7.0 - 7.2 with the crushed coral.
 
I live in Washington. My pH easily crashes to 6.0 without intervention. Adding enough coral to bring it to around 7.0 means a small enough amount to not raise it any higher than that. And it corrodes very rapidly. I have to check my tanks every week and at least once every three to six months the pH starts to slip. Our water here has no hardness of any kind, no resistance to acidification. CT might have harder water that requires less coral. Not sure why yours lasts so long. Mine doesn't. So do keep a close eye on it.
 
I have just got home for dinner and added about 2kg of CC to the sump filter, now its time that i do a water change but how will it go with the added CC, or should i wait for a day or two for the CC to work?
I used the very course type not finely ground.
Should i add a small spoon full of baking soda when doing the water change or will the CC cope with it to keep the PH up.

I am trying to raise it by around 1.5.

thanks wayne:)
 
Just keep on your normal water change routine, and I wouldn't bother with the backing soda. You will start to see the changes soon enough.
 
If you are doing water changes with ph 5.5 water then you are always going to struggle unless you premix the wc water to bring the ph up first, I really do not like the idea of the 5.5 hittingnthe tank and having to be buffered up to higher..


With marines you would always mix your salt and stabilize the salinity first, it should be the same for freshwater and the ph, the fish would not like the chemical change happening in the water.

Could you not mix a re-mineralization as used for ro water before adding the water change?

Sorry if I have mis-understood the post....it has been a long day.
 
Happy now, since i added the CC at about 2pm it has gone upto 6 ph from the 5.5ph, thats 7 hours.

So i am correct in that if i just keep doing water changes with the 5.5 ph tap water then its not realy going to work at keeping stable the ph.

Thats what the idea i ahve have came from to use a 35g tank and use this for the WC water and get it ready in advance using baking soda to get the same levels, then hey ho nice and safe to put straight in the tank.

Could you not mix a re-mineralization as used for ro water before adding the water change
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sorry, dont know what you mean here.


Oh and if the ph keeps going up with the CC then do i just remove some untill i get the PH i want?
 
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