Alkalinity

[ger87410]

My alkalinity is too low. How do you increase it?

 

[tstenback]

How long has your tank been set up and is there a specific reason why you want to adjust the alkalinity (KH)? I ask because doing this can often cause an unstable environment for your fish. Adjusting the KH of your tank usually affects the PH as well so if you raise the alkalinity then the PH goes up as well. If you are adjusting just because it is not what the books say it should be at then dont do it. If your fish are all active and healthy then dont do it. So if there is no specific reason to raise the KH then i would recommend that you dont. It will save you a possible tank crash down the road.

 

[ger87410]

We've had teh tank for about a month or 2. All of the reading in the tank are perfect, nitrite is a little high but oh well . The alkalinity is VERY low. What the "book" says is danger zone. pH is only 6.8 though, could go up a bit. I think I want to increase the alkalinity to increase the pH. Cuz the pH level is governed by a bunch of factors... So if I keep the alkalinity low, the pH will stay low too.

 

[mollyb]

im wondering about this as well because i have a tank that i wanted to add fish to. the person at the lps said my water was fine, but the buffering was lower than their tanks. he recommended i do a water change, add this product called Cichid-Gro, from Tropical Science, and add some powder pH 7.0 stuff. i tested my water today, which is a day short of one week, and the buffering did indeed go up and so did my pH.

He said if i wanted to purchase their fish i would need to adjust my tank accordingly because i may have problems if i added them to my current water.

i currently have the fish listed below and they were doing fine before i did this. did i do the wrong thing. is the lps correct. once i get more fish, do i need to keep adding this chemical (which does say to do every water change) or will the fish become accustomed to the tank without it.

is this just pet store hokey pokey ness to get me to buy crap i dont need. i was going to wait two more weeks to get fish. i wanted to get gouramis. i had some mollies and failed with those, maybe because of the above tank unstableness, i dont know. my platys have been through all the sickness of the mollies, who had everything under the sun and yet the platys prevailed. i hope i am not jinxing this.

i would appreciate anyone's expertise on this matter. the reason i would like gouramis, is because i had excellent luck when i was younger and never took care of the tank properly and these fish lived in basically tap water

what we learn with age and experience

 

[tstenback]

We've had teh tank for about a month or 2. All of the reading in the tank are perfect, nitrite is a little high but oh well . The alkalinity is VERY low. What the "book" says is danger zone. pH is only 6.8 though, could go up a bit. I think I want to increase the alkalinity to increase the pH. Cuz the pH level is governed by a bunch of factors... So if I keep the alkalinity low, the pH will stay low too.

There is nothing wrong with a PH of 6.8. if that is what comes out of your tap then that is what you should go with. to add chemicals or buffering agents just to increase the PH when the fish are fine is really upsetting what is probably a very stable environment. There are various ways to do it such as adding coral pieces to the filter or substrate but you need to add ths slowly so you dont over do it. Other rock ornament will naturally bring up the PH a bit. Baking soda can be added and finally chemicals. But my point is this is all unnatural as it needs to be artificially maintained and if you forget to do the adding at the appropriate time or add too much of something then your tanks PH couold end up swinging wildly and really stress your fish and we all know where that leads. Sorry if it sounds like i am lecturing but i feel quite strong about his topic. If it works dont fix it.

 

[tstenback]

im wondering about this as well because i have a tank that i wanted to add fish to. the person at the lps said my water was fine, but the buffering was lower than their tanks. he recommended i do a water change, add this product called Cichid-Gro, from Tropical Science, and add some powder pH 7.0 stuff. i tested my water today, which is a day short of one week, and the buffering did indeed go up and so did my pH.

He said if i wanted to purchase their fish i would need to adjust my tank accordingly because i may have problems if i added them to my current water.

i currently have the fish listed below and they were doing fine before i did this. did i do the wrong thing. is the lps correct. once i get more fish, do i need to keep adding this chemical (which does say to do every water change) or will the fish become accustomed to the tank without it.

is this just pet store hokey pokey ness to get me to buy crap i dont need. i was going to wait two more weeks to get fish. i wanted to get gouramis. i had some mollies and failed with those, maybe because of the above tank unstableness, i dont know. my platys have been through all the sickness of the mollies, who had everything under the sun and yet the platys prevailed. i hope i am not jinxing this.

i would appreciate anyone's expertise on this matter. the reason i would like gouramis, is because i had excellent luck when i was younger and never took care of the tank properly and these fish lived in basically tap water

what we learn with age and experience

My LFS has a similar policy, but it just affects whether they will guarantee the fish.
/Rant begins
I told the manager that if they want to artificially raise their PH to a magic number then thats fine but to force me, a consumer, to play that same game at great cost over time is bad business ethics. I told him that i always take my time acclimating new fish to my tanks by slowly adding my tank water to the bag of LFS water over a period of 1.5 hours and have never had a fish death due to PH shock. He now gives me the same guarantee that everybody else gets but he still tries to get everyone to up their PH. Its really too bad cause i know he has lost good clientelle over this, but he still gets many more who dont know the difference. It seems unnatural to take the existing water that the whole city gets and change your tanks so that the PH is different. The only reason an LFS would do that is to create a profit for themselves that potentially every customer would buy into. SAD state of affairs.
/Rant ends
Anyway its your call but if you take it slow as you acclimate your fish from their bag to your tank then you wont have a problem. And you have proven the case as your existing fish are fine. IMHO dont mess with your natural water chemistry unless absolutely necessary. Sorry about the rant. HTH

 

[Bol]

ger,

I agree with tstenback, that tinkering with your water chemistry should be done with extreme caution. You can end up with a real mess of unstable 'chemical soup'.

However, low total alkalinity (KH) can be a problem -- specifically, if the KH is too low, your water will be susceptible to pH swings.

The fairly widewpread recommendation is that you want your KH to be at least 3 degrees, or roughly 55 ppm (or 55 mg/l), in order to help keep your pH 'stable'.

Do you happen to have any numbers for your alkalinity test?

 

[mollyb]

thank you all for your replies. this is how my test was reading prior to the addition of bio warfare:
Nitrate 20
Nitrite 0
Hardness 50
Alkalinity about 75 ish
pH 6.4

i agree, i dont want to do this the chemical way, because i dont see a way of maintaining this environment naturally after i have started adding these alien chemicals

tstenback: can i quote you when i talk to them, lol. i agree with you and dont mind the rant. what, like many people starting out, do i know about fish. why cant they educated people the right way. makes me angry too.

i want to go there tomorrow and tell them i dont see how i can maintain a proper aquarium flora with adding chemicals to it. and that i feel its a very unnatural way to go about it and why cant they recommend a piece of rock or drift wood to purchase instead of a twenty dollar bottle of chemicals. and i should tell them i want and refund and take my business elsewhere. but there is no elsewhere.

everywhere i go around here, the fish are discounted from four dollar male guppies to a dollar and nine cents and the rest of their fish are not for sale and in quarrantine. they call it under observation. the tanks that they just overstocked are bare.

petsmart told my sister that their heaters were not working that is why they had no fish, when in fact weeks ago they were overstocked with fancy expensive goldfish crowded in a small tank etc etc. and i also saw tons and tons of baby snails in all the tanks.

theres my rant )


im just nervous because my mollies did so poorly and i felt it was my water quality. i could never figure out why they all got sick.

my pH previously was reading at six, which i called piss yellow

woud you really recommend floating the fish for that long, not the ten minutes the lfs tells you

 

[ger87410]

We've been keeping written records on this tank for 3 days now, but the kh has steadily decreased 80 points, the pH stayed at 7.2 (which is what we try to maintain) until today when it dropped to 6.8. The ammonia has been steadily dropping, nitrate has been steady at .2 hardness stays around 150, nitrite is high. Everything but the nitrite and kh and ph is what we try to maintain it at. Is the nitrite causing our problems?

 

[Bol]

the kh has steadily decreased 80 points

From what to what?

nitrate has been steady at .2

Nitrates are reading 0.2 ppm?

nitrite is high

How high?

 

[ger87410]

The kh went from 120 to 40. Nitrate is real low at I think .2 ppm. Nitrite is reading the highest result available. 10 ppm I think.

 

[tstenback]

We've been keeping written records on this tank for 3 days now, but the kh has steadily decreased 80 points, the pH stayed at 7.2 (which is what we try to maintain) until today when it dropped to 6.8. The ammonia has been steadily dropping, nitrate has been steady at .2 hardness stays around 150, nitrite is high. Everything but the nitrite and kh and ph is what we try to maintain it at. Is the nitrite causing our problems?

Is this tank cycling and if so is it being done with or without fish? If you are cycling you will get some strange readings until the cycle is over. After which you can staighten most of this out with water changes if you are doing this fishless. If you are doing it with fish you may need to do a few water changes on the way to keep things in limits for your fish.

 

[Bol]

What tsten said.

I'd use water changes to get those nitrites down, and then see what you've got once it stablilizes.

Nitrites are acidic, so at that high level, they are probably affecting your pH.