Ph help

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charles-n-charge

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Aug 28, 2010
1,644
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Livingston Tx
I've got a 35 gallon tank with 30lb of crushed coral and aragonite on the bottom. This tank is set up for freshwater so this is raising the ph to levels to high for fish other than cichlids.

My question is how can I counter the rise of the ph to bring it down to safe levels?
 
Stop using the argonite and crushed coral. They will always try to alter the pH by putting off calcium into the water, that's why a lot of people use crushed coral to buffer their tanks, and to prevent pH crashes.
 
I've never used peat in my tanks, but I always try not to mess with pH because pH swings stress fish out, so I try to just keep a steady pH.

I've researched a little about peat in filters, but it got too complicated for me to continue. Hopefully someone more well versed in this can give you some input.
 
Thankfully, one need not be well-versed to know that removing the crushed coral from your system and doing a few water changes will allow your pH to drop to the normal values it would be if from the tap. Texas has hard water as a rule so you probably don't need any buffering at all. No point in trying to lower the pH with solid calcium sitting in it. That's like trying to towel up a fire hydrant's flow without shutting off the hydrant. Remove the coral and other hardening factors and your pH will naturally drop. Just do it gradually for your fishes' sake.
 
I could explain the whole ph/kh/gh/buffering thing, but all you really need to know is you want to remove that substrate if you don't want it to affect your ph. You could just keep African cichlids, they prefer the water conditions provided by your substrate.
 
Charles, what fish exactly are you trying to keep in that tank anyway?
 
Lupin;4804936; said:
Charles, what fish exactly are you trying to keep in that tank anyway?
Click to expand...

Honestly I don't know yet. It was originally brackish for my green spotted puffers, but they killed eachother and I decided I shouldn't do pufferfish again. I'd like to do African cichlids but I'm not sure if my tank is big enough for them. Something I'm considering doing is getting 10 small cichlids and when they outgrow this tank, more them to a 55, then to a 200 when they're big enough to live with the monsters (arowana, gar, Oscar, tiger shovelnose, etc.), but I'm still not sure if they would be able to live with those fish.
 
Try Lake Tanganyikan cichlids. A good number are small enough and will absolutely fit well in your 35g particularly the neolamprologus species. You won't need to worry about adding plenty of crushed corals. They will simply appreciate the "rock hard" water as a result of too much calcium carbonate leached by crushed corals.:)
 
The tank is empty right now though, except for a single feeder as kind of a test dummy to make sure it is safe, which is clearly is because it's been happy in there for days
 
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