Water Chemistry - ph and hardness

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
It's been about 1.5 months. I added seeded bacteria from another 2 month old tank, lightly ammoniated water and a couple of guppies for 3 weeks before I filled it completely and started the filter -- I had some issues with the top brace and the sumps that I had to fix. I had a pump circulating water in the tank during that time.

I definitely have nitrate now so it's mostly cycled at this point. I guess the stunt helped that. We'll see after 2 or 3 more water changes get the ph back down.

Maybe I just added too coral and put it right n the water path. I put it in my wet dry sump and it almost completely filled up the are that the water flows. Maybe 1/4 that much in my full sump might work better. Or none at all....
 
it's only been up for that long, your tank is certainly still cycling. The ph of 6 shouldn't be low enough to cause any real harm as long as you keep up on water changes. What is your Kh without any coral? If it's over 17 I wouldn't worry too much. Get your cycle finished and enjoy some soft water fish. Personally I would love to have your tap water. Looks like its uarus, discus, and rams for you ;)
 
I mainly keep pbass. Which are fine in the soft water and don't mind a little bit of ph fluctuation. I never had a problem keeping them. The kh was near ZERO out of the tap. If not zero.

I want to try rays again. I think nitrates and possibly ph crash was my problem before. If I just keep up with this tank better, since I don't have 5 tanks over 100 gallons, maybe I'll be ok.
 
If your Kh is near zero, I would at least throw some lace rock in the tank for decorations. Lace rock is high in calcium carbonate which will give you some buffering.
 
I would like a little bit of buffering, but I don't want any change in ph. Is lace rock or just a little bit of coral going to do that??
 
Anything that provides buffering will raise your ph. If I was in your situation, I would just add the lace rock or coral and deal with the ph change. The fish can tolerate small changes in ph, hardness, temperature etc. It's when things change by large amounts in small time periods that they can become stressed. Once you develop a routine of small water changes several times a week everything will be fine.
 
The ph is back down and the bacteria has almost completely shut back down. I've never seen this before. Maybe I just never looked this closely. Seems like it's caught mid cycle. It's holding no ammonia just nitrite going up while the nitrate send to be at a stand still. I need to figure out how much coral to put on the sump to keep it at like 6.5. I think I'd be good there.
 
I need to get a low ph specific test. I added the alerts for ph and ammonia. Ammonia is completely gone now from liquid tests and the alert. Ph seems to be higher than 6.0 still. Maybe 6.5. Both the alert and strip are kind of hard to ready differentiate where between 6 and 7. After several water changes after taking out the coral Kh is pretty much gone.

After a month of cycle, the coral, kh and ph bump the cycle HAPPENED. I got nitrates the next day. Along with some nitrite. Now it seems like nitrates are still not rising but nitrite is. It's like that ph and kh bump made enough of a change for the bacteria to flourish and establish for ammonia, but now it can't handle the nitrite. Nitrite seems like it's staying 5-10ppm through water changes. Nitrates are just decreasing, barely increasing if at all. I am using Prime and I have some denitrate in the sump.

The ph fiasco while I had the coral and a big too cooler water change caused the bpass to get ick. I couldn't see it on the silver aro but she started acting like she didn't feel good. Now I have my adapter for my sink so I can do warm water changes and I've had the tank at 88* for almost 2 weeks now and it's pretty much cleared up. Now they seem to be showing the effects of the nitrite. They are ok, just a little shabby looking.
 
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