Advice On How To Fix My Ph Please

[tobywoof]

Hi,

I have a mbuna tank but my pH keeps dropping. Results below:

11 Nov 2011 - 7.6
25 Dec 2011 - 7.0
27 Dec 2011 - 6.0

I did a water change yesterday, could this account for the sudden drop? I have ocean rock and crushed coral sand so I never anticipated having problems with my pH. I did add 6 live plants a couple of weeks ago. They really improve the look of the tank, but could they be the cause of my pH problem? I don't want to start adding chemicals to try and fix the issue, is there another way?

As always, advice is much appreciated.

Thanks

Phil

 

[benzenering]

Your water needs buffering. Baking soda is your friend. It is cheap, too. Add 1 tsp/5 gal water. This will raise your pH to 8.2. Caution. Do this gradually, it is suggested you not raise pH more that 0.3 per day!

 

[DrRob]

Just to rule it out, is there any wood in the tank? Occasionally some woods will leach organic acids that can push the pH down.

Is your tap water soft and acidic? That would push the pH down around water change times, and it'd take a little while to go back up. If so you can try bicarb, or other calcium/magnesium carbonate/bicarb type salt mixes (there are several including DIY ones) or age your water with coral/coral sand before water changes (but that takes more space).

Otherwise it's organics, and yes, the plants may be the culprits there, depends on a lot of things though.

My add on to these topics every time though, is to only mess with water in a way that you're willing to do long term, that way you get a stable tank.

 

[tobywoof]

Hi Dr Rob & Benzenering,

In response to your questions, I've never put any wood in the tank and weirdly, my water comes out of the tap at 7.6. This is making me think that the recently added plants could be the problem. I've read that they are good at breaking down nitrate but do you know how effective this actually is? Am I better off losing the plants or keeping them and adding bicarb frequently to the tank?

 

[Yanks15]

From what you posted, I'd say the plants have had a dramatic effect on your tank! Your pH dropped 1pt in 2 days??? What is your stocking? The fish are probably not too happy right now. I would get those plants out now! Real plants do use up nitrAtes and in a "perfect" tank, your water could actually read "0" nitrAtes after testing, but they really aren't recommended for Mbuna. Most love to dig and will probably eat your plants. If you like the look, use silk plants. I have a couple in with my Mbuna and they look pretty real and no water issues.


Thanks,
Steve

 

[justin85]

Plants cant effect your pH or at least not as much as what you have experienced, My advice is that you need to work out why your pH is dropping before you start adding any buffers (ie. Bicarb) Test your KH and GH in your tank and cross reference the results with your tap water, if your KH and GH are low that will be why your pH is crashing and all you will need to do is a Epsom salts and a little bi barb, but if you start putting buffers in your water before working out the problem you might make your pH fluctuate (which is a lot more harmful to your fish and will result in some if not all of them dying)

As rod said, once you start using buffers/bicarb/Epsom salts etc you will need to keep using them ie at water changes so make sure your prepared for that.

 

[tobywoof]

Hi all,

Thanks for the advice. My current test kit only tests for pH, Nitrate, Nitrate and Ammonia so I'm unable to measure KH or GH (and to be honest, I don't know what these are - next stop, Google).

I've removed all the plants and will test the pH again in the morning. It's definitely coming out of the tap at 7.6 so it must be something going on my tank.

I don't suppose anyone knows any good brands of silk plants available to buy in the UK? Plastic plants usually look dire but some of these silk ones seem really good from what I can see online.

Again, thanks for your posts.

Phill

 

[justin85]

How many plants did you have in there ? KH and GH are importent in a rift tank setup mate, might be worth investing in a API GH and KH test kit.

 

[snazy]

Have you read about old tank syndrome? You've got a Ph crash. In water with low buffering capacity(low Kh), lots of organics, lack of maintenance, overfeeding, underfiltering, lead to huge amount of acidic processes one of which is ammonia to nitrIte converstion about which all of us know, it makes the water acidic and leads to a tank crash which is associated with the Ph dropping so low. It could be even lower, only home tests don't normally have a scale lower than 6ppm. You need daily small water changes to avoid shocking the fish but eventually change the whole tank water, debris/filter clean as it can contain a lot of organics that contribute to it. What's the nitrAte level as this condition is normally associated with high nitrAtes?
Also, keep an eye on ammonia now as the beneficial bacteria dies early or later in such acidic water although at low Ph and low temperatures it's not as toxic to fish. When the Ph starts rising again with lots of water changes, the ammonia if present will become toxic, but the water changes will keep it down, so make sure that's under control too. If you add baking soda now, it will swing the Ph back up in not time, can shock your fish, cause sudden non-toxic to toxic ammonia conversion and kill the fish in turn, so I would not touch that stuff till you are sure you are dealing with low Kh and not an old tank syndrome.
And the plants will only help in this situation and they've nothing to do with such a Ph crash, so I'd put them back.

 

[Yanks15]

Sorry about the "iffy" advice. I assumed that the KH and GH were up to snuff. And seeing that the only addition made to the tank was the plants that had to be the cause. Not being a "plant" guy, it has happened here before that people have put in non-aquarium type plants that I assume could cause ill effect to the water quality. I'll learn to ask more questions before giving advice next time.

 

[justin85]

Sorry about the "iffy" advice. I assumed that the KH and GH were up to snuff. And seeing that the only addition made to the tank was the plants that had to be the cause. Not being a "plant" guy, it has happened here before that people have put in non-aquarium type plants that I assume could cause ill effect to the water quality. I'll learn to ask more questions before giving advice next time.

Your advice was sound mate, plants can effect the pH, they remove and add Co2 and o2 to the tank which has a slight effect on the pH also dead leaves can contribute to the waste in the tank making it more acidic, But for how fast his pH has changed I would think there is more to it than the plants and KH and GH play a massive part it keeping the pH stable.

Personally I think he needs to buffer his tap water once this issue is sorted anyways as pH 7.6 is a little low for a rift tank. But first things first, we need to work out what made it crash in the first place.

 

[Yanks15]

Well, just trying to help and I should have picked up on a probable KH/Gh problem with such a steep drop, especially over the 2 day period. Never asked how long the tank has been up and running or what the water stats are across the board. Could be old tank syndrome.........

 

[snazy]

Dead plants produce very little ammonia compared to other type of waste. And you would nearly wan't a tank jammed with plants with no room for fish, for them to actually contribute to the CO2 level to the point of causing a Ph drop. If that was possible, then no one would be injecting CO2 in planted tanks, since the plants "should" be producing it themselves if this was the case.... But even if you say that the plants caused the Ph to crash down to 6ppm because of high CO2 levels, then the Ph should have been up to nearly normal the next day after the lights were on for a while, since the plants would have used up that same CO2. The water surface movement would have got rid of any excess CO2 additionally on top of that, causing the CO2 levels to drop, which in turn would cause the Ph to go back up to it's normal 7.6ppm, which isn't the case at all here according to the OP's information. Ph swings due to CO2 levels have little to no effect on fish as it has nothing to do with how soft/acidic the water is in terms of mineral content, GH/Kh

 

[tobywoof]

Hi everyone, really appreciate all the advice. I didn't know the situation was so serious when I first started this thread. Here is all the info I can think of:

There were 6 plants, but I binned them yesterday, not a problem though, will replace them today (thank you garden centre 5 minutes up the road)

TANK INFORMATION

Tank Age - 3 months
Tank Size - 330 litres but I have a 3D background and quite a bit of ocean rock, so I'm estimating it's more like 300 litres = (TANK LINK)
Filtration - External filter, 2000 LH = (FILTER LINK)
Powerhead - Hydor Koralioa Evolution 2800 = (POWERHEAD LINK)
Heater - 300w heater (included with tank) - tank is a constant 25 degrees
Fishes - 17 juvenile mbuna cichlids, all look perfectly healthy and acting normally. Very little aggression in the tank, fish seem fine
Cleaning - I've been doing 20% water changes every week without fail, including sand vacuuming and cleaning the filter.
Feeding - (from what you've been saying, I'm pretty sure this is the problem. I have been feeding them 2 or 3 times a day and it takes about 2 or 3 minutes for my fish to clear it all. This is what I was advised at the fish shop but now I understand this is WAY too much. I read yesterday, you should feed them once a day and the food should be gone in a minute! Will do this going forward


TEST RESULTS ON DEC 27th
pH 6.0
Nitrate 5.00
Nitrite 0.00
Ammonia 0.00


TEST RESULTS ON DEC 29th
pH 7.6
Nitrate 5.00
Nitrite 0.00
Ammonia 0.00

I do not understand how my pH has gone from 6 to 7.6 in a couple of days. I haven't done a water change in this time, all I've done is take out the 6 plants. The fish should be stressed by this, right? But they are acting and looking well. I'm hoping the problem is from me overfeeding. But I will wait for confirmation from one of you guys, obviously I've made a few rookie mistakes here! I love my tank and I'm worried my fish may be unwell due to the pH see-sawing like this.

Thanks again for everyone's posts, I'd be in a jam without this forum!

Phill

 

[Yanks15]

Did you say "garden certre'? I guess the question I failed to ask from the start...... were these aquatic plants you put in to begin with? Do they sell plants for an aquarium at "garden centres" there? I know here(US), we usually go to fish stores to purchase aquarium safe plants, and even then, I've heard of people buying non-aquatic plants from a LFS. Do you remember the names of these plants? Hopefully Snazy will be along soon to help you sort this out.


Thanks,
Steve