pH

The wisest thing I was ever told was dont chase PH.

Keep your Alk, Calc, Mag, salt level in balance and dont worry about the rest.

10% monthly water changes and you should be in good shape.

 

Monthly??!!/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/shocked.gif/DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/crazy.gif Should that be Weekly or worse case bi-weekly?

 

Ph is mostly the relationship between alk and CO2. If your alk is steady and pH is swinging then it is the household level of CO2. Those who live in places with lots of CO2 sometimes run their skimmers air line outside to fresh air. You have a good amount of CO2 in the house. Opening windows drops that level and pH rises.

 

An article from my favorite source of reef knowledge, Randy.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/

 

You added bicarbonate to your water that's what's causing the crrep. You need to get a measure of your ca mag and alk. Once you know where those sit. You will find where your swing comes from. Rodi water with salt mix to 35 refractive will put you around 8.2 to 8.4 solid. So if your getting changes from there it's something in the construct of the water.

Weekly 10% at the least should be maintained.

 

Recent experience with this myself. My newly setup tank is in my unfinished basement and it doesn't have great air exchange. I use an AquaC skimmer so I don't have a venturi to pull in fresh air. I attached airline tubing to the intake on the top of my overflow pipe and have it running on brackets about 15 feet to the outside wall where I drilled a hole through the insulation and siding and ran the pipe through. It raised my average Ph from 8.02 to 8.24 and the swing is .05 instead of .12ish. I considered putting a Co2 scrubber on the overflow intake but running the tubing outside was the long term cheaper option.

 

Bicarbonate will have a minimal pH impact. Now carbonate will jack the pH up, but baking soda doesn't do much pH wise especially compared to CO2 levels.

 

This is a FOWLR tank with no corals?

So why does he need 10% or more weekly water changes? I dont see where he said nitrates or algae is the issue, just ph.

Fish doesnt consume alk, calc, or magnesium, or trace elements, so changing water isnt going to help those.

And why does he need to worry about PH, or dosing anything with only fish?

What am I missing?

 

I don't think he needs to worry about any of those. He just asked why the pH changed so fast so I told him.

 

I agree with xroads. With fish only 10 percent t monthly. And why are you even testing ph. I have full sps tank and haven't tested ph for 3 years. As long as everything looks good you should be fine. I recently red an article on meleve's reef a while back he states don't chase ph numbers.

 

http://www.melevsreef.com/articles/dont-chase-ph

 

Agreed, I've tried all sorts of products, pointless. did research and in the end: corals growing, fish eating, all is good.

 

(Accidental repost)

 

Ah yeah. I noticed the fowlr part now. Occham's Razor award to xroads. The good news is just ignore Ph unless you're trying to level things out for the eventual addition of corals.

 

Here is something else to consider.

If your PH is falling that low, that means you have a high CO2 buildup within your house, which also is not good for human health.

It may be worth checking into, you could have a faulty appliance that is slowly poisoning you as well.

If it is just buildup, you can leave your bathroom fan on for longer periods of time. That will draw out your stale high CO2 air, and draw in fresh air from the outside from the vacuum effect.

 

I don't think pumping air in will be as effective as having something in your tank drawing it in at a turbulent area with the water. If you have a durso overflow you should have an air vent on top of it, a hole with a tube coming out of it or just a hole maybe. If you put tubing from outside to that it will siphon in the fresh air. If you have a skimmer pump with a venturi line you can attach the line to that to siphon and mix it in. But like xroads said, if you don't have corals in this tank Ph isn't really a big deal. FOWLR care isnt terribly different from freshwater care other than maintaining salinity and keeping nitrates and phosphates down to stop algae growth.