Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => The Emergency Room => Topic started by: steven on September 02, 2014, 07:08:26 AM
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No matter what I do my PH level drops to 6 or lower. I've got fresh plants, change water regularly and used PH UP water treatments. After a dose of PH UP it goes to 7 or above but within 4 hours it is back down. Can somebody help with this
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Hello steven welcome to the forum
have you tested your tap water first to find out what ph it starts of from the tap leave a cup of water of night and test it the following day , this will give you a base figure for the ph of your tank , after that you need to find out the hardness of your water this should be listed on your water suppliers website if your water is soft or very soft like mine it is likely that your kh is also very low - kh helps to buffer the ph against changes like you are suffering from ,if you dont want to buy a test kit for ph you could take a sample of water to your lfs fish shop and ask them to test for kh for you.
i to was suffering the exact same problem as with my ph droping to 6.0 or lower overnight but there is ways to correct it once we know the cause :fishy1:
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And I would stop using the pH up as fluctuating pH is bad for fish. It is much better to find the cause and do something about that rather than treat the symptom.
As Chris says, if we can find out what you tapwater pH is both freshly drawn and a glass of water that's stood for 24 hours; and your tapwater KH, we will have something to work with. You can buy testers gor KH but since you only need to test once to know your KH, it is far cheaper to take some tapwater to a shop as and them to test it. Get them to write down the result, and the unit they are using. Hardness of both kinds has several units, it's a bit like temperature - is some one using F or C, you need to know which to make sense of the value.
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Thanks I'll check tap water today and tomorrow after standing. I'll let you know the results. Yes I was concerned about sudden fluctations too.
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Tested water after 24 hours with a test strip. PH still 7 and KH between 6d and 10d. These both showed as green meaning okay. I don't understand water hardness but all showed okay on strip. I was told at Aquatics that PH reduction is usually down to bogwood or uneaten food. I don't have bogwood and make sure there isn't any food not eaten. I was advised to change 30% of the water and did this but PH still down to 6.
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Curious.
The reason they said food can lower the pH is that uneaten food decomposes to make ammonia which the filter turns into nitrate, which acidic. Lots of nitrate coupled with insufficient water changes can lower the pH.
Bogwood can also lower pH because it releases acidic tannins. But there would need to be a huge amount of it to lower pH that much.
I see you are using a test strip. These are known to be inaccurate. If you really do have a KH of between 6 and 10, you shouldn't be suffering pH drops like this - if it really is dropping. I have KH 3 and mine only drops if I don't do weekly water changes.
I am beginning to suspect the accuracy of the strips as nothing else adds up. I would be inclined to ask a shop to test your pH for you, especially if they use liquid reagent testers. Take a sample of fresh tapwater, stood tapwater and tank water.
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thanks Sue I'll take it to the Aquatics and post their results
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Thinking about it, you don't really need fresh tapwater, just stood and tank. They might object to 3 samples but 2 should be OK especially if you say you want to compare your tank to the tap.