I just did a quick check with South Staffs online and the PH readings for the 2 closest towns were:

Minimum Mean Max

West Brom 6.8, 7.3, 8.4
Oldbury W 6.7, 7.1, 7.9

This post has been edited by stormy78: May 16 2008, 08:24 AM

Interesting, this would tend to look like information that would reinforce the advice that Colin gave a while back: He said he tests the tap water parameters each time prior to water changes in order to be prepared to deal with different changes that might happen. I vaguely remember his comment being received in an unpopular way by some members, but it stands to reason that some water systems might be much more controlled and consistent than others.

~~waterdrop~~

makes sense to me, don't recall the comment by Colin that you're referring to

Yeah, I probably would have a hard time pulling up the Colin comment again myself, I just remember maybe it was in one of those long discussions about dechlor and temp matching in water changes that periodically take place, you know the ones where many of the pros talk of just (exaggerating here..) blasting the tank with some nice cold water from the hose out back and how nothing bad ever comes of it.. well I just remembered Colin as one who wished to be more careful, preparing the replacement water a little more carefully so as not to have a surprise loss of fish.

~~waterdrop~~

Well I bought a different liquid test kit today and tested again. It appears that the PH is currently 7.0. When compairing it with the API kit it now seems to tally up!

Day 34 (Friday 16th May)

Tested Ammonia at 8.00am
Ammonia: 0.00ppm
NitrIte: 0.00pm
PH: 6.8

Ammonia was raised to 5ppm

Tested Ammonia at 8.00pm
Ammonia: 0.50ppm
NitrIte: 5.00ppm
NitrAte: 40 ppm
PH: 7.0

Ammonia is neeeeeeeaaarly there in the 12 hours...... as for Nitrite who knows?!?

Day 35 (Saturday 17th May)

Tested Ammonia at 8.00am
Ammonia: 0.00ppm
NitrIte: 1.00pm
PH: 7.0

Ammonia was raised to 5ppm

Tested Ammonia at 8.00pm
Ammonia: 1.00ppm
NitrIte: 5.00ppm
NitrAte: 40 ppm
PH: 7.0

yup, seems we have that discussion on a weekly basis. i'm definatley an advocate of cold water from the tap, however our water round here is v good and reliable, i think particularly in some of the more remote parts of the states and australia the water is much less reliable and you should take a little more caution.





excellent, unfortunatley it usually takes around twice as long for the nitrite to drop to 0 as it did for ammonia...... nitrite has a tendency to linger at around 1ppm for bloody ages!! However it's ncie to know stage 1 of the cycle is v nearly done if nothing else

Day 36 (Sunday 18th May)

Tested Ammonia at 8.00am
Ammonia: 0.00ppm
NitrIte: 1.00pm
PH: 7.0

Ammonia was raised to 5ppm

Tested Ammonia at 8.00pm
Ammonia: 1.00ppm
NitrIte: 5.00ppm
NitrAte: 40 ppm
PH: 7.0

Day 37 (Monday 19th May)

Tested Ammonia at 8.00am
Ammonia: 0.00ppm
NitrIte: 0.25pm
NitrAte: 40
PH: 7.0

Ammonia was raised to 5ppm

Tested Ammonia at 8.00pm
Ammonia: 1.00ppm
NitrIte: 5.00ppm
NitrAte: 40 ppm
PH: 6.8

I am starting to get frustrated now as I dont feel like I'm making any progress I need to get this cycled in the next 4 weeks or so as I go on holiday and all the work so far will be undone if no fish are present.

This post has been edited by stormy78: May 19 2008, 09:09 PM

I reviewed some of your thread and realized we got sidetracked a bit talking about how the pH seemed to measure as high as 7.6 coming out of the tap but then drops to 6.8 fairly quickly.

You'll note that BTT said in one post that pH 6.8 should be fine and I agreed, saying it might be slower but probably wouldn't be worth messing with. At the time you seemed fine with being patient. You might want to wait and see what BTT (or any other experts like RDD or others that might chime in) rather than what I'm about to tell you, but here goes:

If you are the kind of impatient where you just want to try something, you could try attempting to get the pH up higher and see if that improves the speed (of course you'll never really know if it did or whether the nitrites just finally started processing!) and my own feeling is that this doesn't hurt anything because it all goes "out with the bath water" so to speak when you change out the water prior to fish.

It would be ideal to do this after a water change, but its not really necessary(its nicer for your log records that way because you get a feel for what you can do starting at tap water stats and making a change). You can read this in some of the other current threads where people are being helped. I'll mention two ways, crushed corel in the filter or baking soda in the tank. Let's assume you try baking soda in the tank. You need pure kitchen baking soda, ingredients should say Sodium Bicarbonate. Make sure its not Baking Powder or anything else but simple baking soda. I think your has about 150 to 160 litres of water. The rate to dose is 1 teaspoon per 50 litres to raise KH about 4 degrees and maybe raise pH a little or none. You could try 4 teaspoons as a first conservative try, then you could do more later after considering it with help from here.

The main idea is to either hold that initial pH 7.6 up there or even push it a little higher. You'd need a KH test kit, have you got one? You could consider putting it in an old sock and lowering that into your open-top internal or HOB filter if you have one, or into the side of the tank. Personally I just sprinkle it in and it dissapates quickly. You'd measure your KH and pH prior to doing this of course, so you have good records of where you've been and what changes.

Anyway I'll try to check back in at some point to see what you decide,
~~waterdrop~~

Hi Waterdrop, I'm fine with waiting but as I said, with going away on holiday I dont want the slow progress made so far undone because I can either not find someone to add the ammonia or I do and they cock it up lol. The problem I have with the tap water is that the PH varies and thats with the water being medium hard. On Miss Wiggles advice I bought a digital PH reader which is far easier to read. After calibration the PH at work (8 miles from the tank) is around a very high 8.6. At home the PH out of the tap was reading 7.05 so I can see why it slowly drops in the tank. However as I said the PH in my tap water has been as high as the late 7's with the liquid test kits going blue instantly.

I know the filter is maturing each day and I can see slight variations in colour on the test kits that do not mean that they are the next reading down yet on the results cards but tat they are heading that way. Ammonia is definatly processing within 24 hours and NitrItes are getting close. This morning showed that NitrItes dropped from 5ppm at 8pm last night to 0.25 this morning. The PH has, however, dropped down to 6.6 so I was planning a 90% water change this evening to raise the PH back to 7. After the last water change the PH stayed stable for 5 days.

I really dont want to mess with the PH artificially if I can help it but its just so infuriating that my tap PH fluctuates so much!

This post has been edited by stormy78: May 20 2008, 07:23 AM

it could well be that the tap water fluctuates cos it has a low kh, the water company will add stabilisers but these are only temporary which would be why it fluctuates.

have you tested your kh?

Hi MW I tested my water hardness a few weeks back and the GH came in at 179ppm, or 10dkh, the KH came in at 107.4ppm, or 6dkh. I have checked with South Staffs water and they say the water hardness here is 165.8ppm or 9.3dkh.

KH of 6 or 9, shouldn't matter, should hold the pH pretty steady for a pretty long time, should not fluctuate a lot like KH 0-3 would.

So the issue is really that the tap water, after it settles, is just coming in at a pretty low pH. And its only a bit of an issue for fishless cycling. After you have fish it should be a good combo, the plants liking the more acid water and many good acid-loving fish to choose from and your KH keeping it pretty stable.. will be good tap water I would think.

So MW, what do you think? It seems sort of on the border line whether a recommendation of crushed corel just to possibly speed up the fishless cycle is really a responsible recommendation or not. I sort of hate to get into making things more complicated for people.

[ I -do- feel that we've had a lot of anecdotal information in many recent fishless cycling reports from people that seem to very much confirm the thing that apparently has been said for many years, that the bacteria we want will grow faster up around a pH of 8 and slow to an almost complete stop down around 6.2 pH. The Hovanec articles seemed to lend support to this also, but I'd hate to be disseminating exaggerated information.]

~~waterdrop~~

Day 38 (Tuesday 20th May)

Tested Ammonia at 8.00am
Ammonia: 0.00ppm
NitrIte: 0.25pm
NitrAte: 40
PH: 6.67

Ammonia was raised to 5ppm

Tested Ammonia at 8.00pm
Ammonia: 1.00ppm <
NitrIte: 5.00ppm
NitrAte: 40 ppm
PH: 6.69

I have retested the tap water and the PH is 7.06.