Tropical Fish Forum

Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => Fish Tank Plant Advice => Topic started by: Andy The Minion on July 04, 2018, 01:31:06 PM

Title: PH buffering
Post by: Andy The Minion on July 04, 2018, 01:31:06 PM
Time to dust of the Chemistry diplomas again !
I have been having issues for some time with pH stability because of our soft water. The initial issue was solved in one tank with a drip system but I have noticed that the fry tank is now starting to show problems, presumably because of the increasing bio load as they get bigger. So I went looking for alternatives, I came across a discussion in the Barr report which talked about Seachem pH and Alkalinity buffers. There were a few recipes and an analysis of the Seachem product so I had a look for the materials and was thinking about trying one of them. One thing I noticed was that one of the ingredience is Calcium Sulphate. I can find three forms hemihydrate (plaster of Paris!) di-hydrate (Gypsum) and anhydrous but all the COSH data mentionioned solubility in water at between 0.1-1.0% and I could imagine a whiteout in the tank a bit like the Dolomite solution. Any suggestions how this is going to work?
https://barrreport.com/threads/gh-booster.6462/

Heads up @fcmf a lot of the chatter is about poor plant growth in soft water and this is the reason the planted tank people are interested in KH buffers.
Title: Re: PH buffering
Post by: Sue on July 04, 2018, 03:30:24 PM
To be honest, I would use remineralisation salts as used by those who use 100% RO water. That adds all the minerals found in harder water. You would just need to test for GH and KH to find the right amount to use.
Title: Re: PH buffering
Post by: fcmf on July 04, 2018, 08:10:54 PM
Heads up @fcmf a lot of the chatter is about poor plant growth in soft water and this is the reason the planted tank people are interested in KH buffers.
Thanks, Andy - noted. I do think I've inherited my mother's inability to keep plants alive, though, so think I'll be sticking to what does work for the foreseeable future. However, I'll continue to read threads on the issue with interest / for learning.
Title: Re: PH buffering
Post by: Littlefish on July 04, 2018, 08:21:24 PM
I'm currently ready a book called Brackish-Water Fishes (Neale Monks, Ed), mainly because I'm still trying to work out exactly what species my mudskippers are. NM has also written a section on plants for brackish water, so I might give it a go at putting some appropriate live plants in with the little fellas. I tried mangrove seedlings previously (with no success), then air plants (which rotted in the high humidity).
Considering my mixed results with live plants in other tanks, I have no idea if this is going to work, so at some point I may have to learn when to give up.  ???