I'm in the process of switching some fish around to give them more room and put them with more compatible fish. I have a 40 gallon running a cheap little co2 thingy. It's extremely heavily planted and has some big peices of driftwood. I add Flourish Comprehensive and Flourish Excel. It's a tiny bit overstocked. The substrate is a mix of store-bought aquarium sand and Flourite. I do a 25% water change twice a week.
The other tank is a 29 gallon lightly planted, same setup except I don't add any chemicals. It's also slightly overstocked. I do a 33% water change twice a week.
I checked the pH of the 40 gallon and it said 7.3
I checked the pH of the 29 gallon and it said 7.6
This made sense... I assume the co2 bubbler brings down the pH a bit.
I checked the pH of my tap and it suprisingly is about 6.9
I don't understand this.
How is it that my pH is higher in the tanks than coming from the tap?
We have well water and we live in a rocky area so I assumed the pH from the faucet was probably like 7.6 at the least.
Any insight?
The other tank is a 29 gallon lightly planted, same setup except I don't add any chemicals. It's also slightly overstocked. I do a 33% water change twice a week.
I checked the pH of the 40 gallon and it said 7.3
I checked the pH of the 29 gallon and it said 7.6
This made sense... I assume the co2 bubbler brings down the pH a bit.
I checked the pH of my tap and it suprisingly is about 6.9
I don't understand this.
How is it that my pH is higher in the tanks than coming from the tap?
We have well water and we live in a rocky area so I assumed the pH from the faucet was probably like 7.6 at the least.
Any insight?
. I have the same problem and with my research I found out that having a heavily planted tank means that you also have plants that thrive and loose leaves, decompose (part of a natural cycle of growth) when this happens and rotting plant matter is NOT removed that rotting plant matter then raises your ammonia. And an increase in ammonia also raises your ph