Calling All Experts

[fatheadminnow]

Just to pick up on FHM's not dout typo, pH is not measured in PPM. pH is a number only, and hence has no unit. It is a count of how many Hydrogen Ions there is in a mole of water. A Mole is basically a fixed number or atoms within the substance you are measuring... pH is mathematical short-hand for one times ten to the minus, therefore, pH 7 means 0.0000007 Hydrogen Ions per mole of water. Mind you, this is superficial to your question and I'm ranting a bit here

For general tropicals, don't worry about pH unless it's lower than 6.5, or above 8. Ignore the water in the tank if you are cycling. Ammonia is Alkaline, and puts upward pressure on the pH reading. Nitrite and Nitrate are acidic and put downward pressure on the pH reading.

Some fish do have particular hardness requirements (some argue pH too) and hence you should look into if the fish you are after are particular fussy to hardness requirements before purchase. (I tend to ignore pH measurements in most cases, when you read into the science of how fish balance osmotic and pH pressures you quickly realise that if pH is on the chart still, it likely isn't an issue to the fish, but hardness counts for a lot)

All the best
Rabbut

I read this over and over many of times and I could not figure out why you said, that I said pH is measured in ppm.

Then I went back and read what I wrote and I *DID* say pH 9.0 ppm!?

I should know better, as I know pH is not measured in ppm, that is kind of weird why I said that

At least now I know why you said "Just to pick up on FHM's not dout typo, pH is not measured in PPM"...lol.

I guess I made a typo...lol... must have been very tired or something....

But now I know why you said that, as I could not figure out for the life of me why you said that?

It took me two days to figure this out...lol...

-FHM

 

[kcharley]

Then I deal with the KH issue ..which is getting better since I added the shells...kh was 0 now its 3...a start at least. My KH is the biggest issue I have. I can't put fish in the tank until I get that stabilized because the same thing will happen to me that happened all this past year....fish died each and every time I did a water change because the PH I was adding didnt match the tank PH because the tank PH slowly drops and drops and drops....then I add a HIGH Ph with water change. Killed all my fish

Hi Lioness,

I also was suffering some fish loss at water changes and like you I attributed it to Ph differences. I've concluded in my case that changing Ph isn't hurting the fish, but rapid Kh changes do.

When I thought Ph changes were the culprit, I started going to the trouble of getting RO water to mix with my tap water to minimize Ph changes from water changes. I was anal about calculating the mix of 7.0 RO water to my 8.4 tap water to match the Ph of the tank. I also became anal about matching temperature. I was still losing some fish. Then I read somewhere that it wasn't Ph changes but rapid Kh changes that killed fish. Testing my tank water before changes revealed that the Kh dropped from 3 or 4 to 1 or 0 between water changes. I added crushed coral in the filter and my Kh has stabilized at either 3 or 5. (It varies by tank depending on whether CO2 is added.)

Since matching the Kh, I haven't had any fish loss due to water changes. I no longer buy RO water. As I said, my tap water Ph is 8.4. The Ph in my CO2 tank varies between 6.0 and 6.4. I do weekly 50% water changes. Again no fish loss. I'm still anal about water temp but now the added water is 2 to 4 degrees cooler than the tank. The fish just seem happiest and least stressed with that temp. (Warmer temps even only 1 or 2 degrees make my fish really sluggish with occasional fish loss.)

If your added water is the same Kh as the tank and 2 to 4 degrees cooler than I am at a loss to explain fish loss. HTH and good luck.

Aaron,

I am really curious about those who have 0 Kh. Can you tell me what their water change procedures are that they don't have fish loss? Maybe it is something other than Kh but I agree with you that Ph changes are a minimal, in any problem.

Greg

 

[drobbyb]

I am really curious about those who have 0 Kh. Can you tell me what their water change procedures are that they don't have fish loss? Maybe it is something other than Kh but I agree with you that Ph changes are a minimal, in any problem.

Greg

I have 0 KH and I run crushed coral. That's it. Nothing more lol

 

[fatheadminnow]

Fish also die from pH shock.

-FHM

 

[kcharley]

I am really curious about those who have 0 Kh. Can you tell me what their water change procedures are that they don't have fish loss? Maybe it is something other than Kh but I agree with you that Ph changes are a minimal, in any problem.

Greg

I have 0 KH and I run crushed coral. That's it. Nothing more lol

Hi Robby,

Interesting. When you do a water change, do you know the Kh of the added water? I'm assuming you don't have fish loss with water changes. Thanks.

Hi FHM,

Maybe I don't understand something. What do you mean by pH shock? For example take my CO2 tank, at highest the pH is 6.4. The added water is 8.4. With a 50% water change, the mix is 7.4. I've seen claims that a rapid change of .2 pH is fatal. IME, that simply isn't true.

Greg

 

[drobbyb]

Greg,
My tap water has 0 KH. I change 50% of my water weekly. It changes slowly enough that it does not stress your fish. If I wait 14 days my KH will go up too far and will now need many small and timed waterchanges to get back on track. As long as you don't go up more than 3 degrees before you reach your mormal waterchange.

 

[fatheadminnow]

I am really curious about those who have 0 Kh. Can you tell me what their water change procedures are that they don't have fish loss? Maybe it is something other than Kh but I agree with you that Ph changes are a minimal, in any problem.

Greg

I have 0 KH and I run crushed coral. That's it. Nothing more lol

Hi Robby,

Interesting. When you do a water change, do you know the Kh of the added water? I'm assuming you don't have fish loss with water changes. Thanks.

Hi FHM,

Maybe I don't understand something. What do you mean by pH shock? For example take my CO2 tank, at highest the pH is 6.4. The added water is 8.4. With a 50% water change, the mix is 7.4. I've seen claims that a rapid change of .2 pH is fatal. IME, that simply isn't true.

Greg

For some this is true, while for others it may not.

It also may depend on the different circumstances within the tank and other variables that are present.

If you have a larger tank and you do a water change, then the tap water going in is going to have more time to disperse, meaning it is not going to 'shock' the fish as mush as lets say a 10 gallon tank. Where the new water added is going to have a quicker response with the fish, due to the smaller water volume.

Like I said, there are a lot of variables that we have to take into consideration in this situation; I would be glad that you don't have to worry about pH shock in your tank.

-FHM

 

[drobbyb]

Very interesting.

 

[kcharley]

Hi Robby, Hi FHM,

Thanks for the replys.

Robby, just to be sure I understand. Your added water and your tank water are both 0 Kh and you don't have fish loss due to water changes. That would agree with my experience that matched Kh seems to be good for fish. Interesting that your fish tolerate warmer incoming water better than mine. I run my tanks near the upper end, and sometimes beyond, of the recommended range for the species.

FHM, it doesn't seem to matter the size of tank. I've got tanks ranging from 1 to 29 gallons and I no longer try to match pH. I just fill straight from the hose. I try to keep it gentle but still it only takes a few minutes to add 15 gallons. I'll try to time the additions. You've got me curious. I agree that there are more variables than pH, KH and temp and that one has to find what works for them. I am glad that I found something that works for me. My wife and child get sad when we lose a fish. As I get more experience that is happening less often.

Lioness, I just thought of something else. Are you using only one dechlorinator and the same brand at water changes. I just recalled that somebody on a different website was losing shrimp at water changes. The problem was traced back to his alternating dechlorinators, using one for one water change and another for the next water change. The suspicion was there was some chemical reaction between the two. Whatever it was, his shrimp loss stopped once he stopped switching dechlorinators.

Greg

 

[drobbyb]

My tap has a pH of 6.6 with a 0 on KH. My tanks are 7.0. So when we change half the water, and mix the new water in. The result is a KH of 2 and a pH of about 6.8

 

[waterdrop]

...note that GH is the sum of both GH and KH....

Are you sure WD? Substituting A for GH, and B for KH we get:

A + B = A

GH = temporary hardness + permanent hardness.

Dave.

i thought i hd posted that in my above reply but here it is again:

Total hardness (GH) is the total number of multivalent cations in water and canbe split in to 2 sections: temporary and permanent.
Temporary Hardness (KH) is the amount of multivalent cations that are carbonates and bicarbonates.
Permanent Hardness is the amount of multivalent cations that are everything except carbonates and bicarbonates,

Dave, Aaron,
Yes, this was a typo. I meant to put Permanent Hardness. Aaron has covered the whole correction even better than I would have. Sorry, I was moving too fast copying some boilerplate from old txt files and adding things.
WD

 

[LionessN3cubs]

Hi Robby, Hi FHM,

Thanks for the replys.

Robby, just to be sure I understand. Your added water and your tank water are both 0 Kh and you don't have fish loss due to water changes. That would agree with my experience that matched Kh seems to be good for fish. Interesting that your fish tolerate warmer incoming water better than mine. I run my tanks near the upper end, and sometimes beyond, of the recommended range for the species.

FHM, it doesn't seem to matter the size of tank. I've got tanks ranging from 1 to 29 gallons and I no longer try to match pH. I just fill straight from the hose. I try to keep it gentle but still it only takes a few minutes to add 15 gallons. I'll try to time the additions. You've got me curious. I agree that there are more variables than pH, KH and temp and that one has to find what works for them. I am glad that I found something that works for me. My wife and child get sad when we lose a fish. As I get more experience that is happening less often.

Lioness, I just thought of something else. Are you using only one dechlorinator and the same brand at water changes. I just recalled that somebody on a different website was losing shrimp at water changes. The problem was traced back to his alternating dechlorinators, using one for one water change and another for the next water change. The suspicion was there was some chemical reaction between the two. Whatever it was, his shrimp loss stopped once he stopped switching dechlorinators.

Greg

Nope, not alternating. I started out using 1 kind and lost fish. When that bottle ran out, I tried pond dechlorinator, fish still died.

Im going to try again, and pay more attention to the PH/KH issue and see what happens

 

[aaronnorth]

kcharley, they do 50% weekly i believe.

 

[waterdrop]

pH below 5.5 = possible danger of bacteria die-off
pH 5.5 to 6.2 = cycling process stalled or stopped
pH 6.3 to 7.0 = slow beneficial bacterial development
pH 7.1 to 7.9 = faster beneficial bacterial development
pH 8.0 to 8.4 = optimal/fastest bacterial development
pH 8.5 to 8.9 = too high, slower bacterial development
ph above 9.0 = possible danger of bacteria die-off

my pH is usually pH6-6.5, due to CO2 injection and i dont get a reading of ammonia. As far as i am aware my bacteria function perfectly well, and healthy fish.

Ok so i have plants but surely if my bacteria slow, stall or stop then the ammonia would be detectable? They cant use that much ammonia and once it gets above 0.5ppm they dont use it as a source of Nitrogen anymore.

For some reason i dont buy into pH crashes and the like, i know lots of people who run tanks with CO2 injection, and 0dkh but their pH remains constant According to the information that gets passed around on here the pH should of crashed, it should be up and down, dead fish, dead bacteria... but nothing.

My advice... dont worry too much.

Thanks.

Hi Aaron,

I didn't understand your last little post answering something to kcharley.

But it reminded me I wanted to get back to this even though I will probably just put my foot in my mouth, lol. When I first wrote this chart (a long time ago) I was thinking exclusively about the development of *NEW* colonies at startup. In fact I was mostly thinking about them during fishless cycling. I never meant it to be read as a comment on how bacteria would behave in an ongoing mature tank. I was thinking of it as a summary of things that Hovanec and RDD and others had said about how to keep the fragile, fledgling colonies moving forward during fishless cycling and a little bit about which pH range might help them grow faster.

I realize I'm on shaky ground here but I tend to feel that once the two autotrophic colonies have matured then by many accounts I've read, there seem to be plenty of stories that they can survive some pretty rough things (lack of food, temperature changes, tap water sometimes, some drying out sometimes and yes, I'd think some pretty extreme pH levels.) I don't know if there is much basis for drawing differences between bacteria when they are still building up in new colonies compared to when they have been around for say six months or a year, but for better or worse, this is how I tend to think about it. I've got a nice big shiny huge bacteria textbook here that one of the old biochem professors gave me (he gets a laugh hearing the strange stuff I stumble upon, like this hobby) so maybe I'll someday find something in that!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[kcharley]

Thanks Aaron. I'm guessing their added and tank water Kh must match. I could let my tanks go to 0 Kh but my tap water is 3 to 4 Kh. At least matching the Kh works for me.