Fishless Cycle Low Ph

[Uriel]

My PH of my fish tank seems to have dropped quite a bit during fishless cycling. I know this can happen and have also read that it can cause the cycle to slow or even stall. I read you can add something to bring the ph back up should i do this and what was it. I would prefer to avoid a water change as it's a 500l tank and i'm currently using a bucket to change water.

Water Stats
Tap Water Ph 7.4 Amm 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 0
Tank Day 1 Ph 8.4 Amm 4-5 Nitite 0 Nitrate 0
Tank today Ph 6.0 Amm 0 Nitrite 5+ Nitrate 5-10 (Before adding ammonia)
Tank today Ph 6.5 Amm 2 Nitrite 5+ Nitrate 5-20 (After adding ammonia)

6 is the minimum on my PH test.
5 is maximum that API test will go up too on nitrite
Nitrate may have been bought in from ornaments and gravel from established tank I used to seed.

The cycle has been running for 12 days. It took 5 days for the ammonia dropped to 0 and i started redosing the ammonia every 24 hours. I'm currently dosing with 2ppm ammonia since i'm in stage 2.

 

[mattlee]

a decent sized water change will get the water back upto the right pH

 

[Skins]

Hi,
You can always try adding sobium bicarbonate(baking soda) if you wish to avoid a water change.
DOSE 1.5 tsp per 50ltr then test your pH after 1 hour, you want to be aiming for between 7.4-8.2 if more bicarb is required then add 1.5 tsp and test 1 hour later keep repeating this until you get desired level.

Skins.

P.S make sure the baking soda ONLY contains sodium bicarbinate.

 

[anon02]

I have very soft water with corresponding low KH, when my pH crashed, I was advised to add 1 - 1.5 teaspoons per 50 litres of bicarbonate of soda, this worked for me. Looking back through my journal this brought my pH from 6.2 to 8.2

 

[Uriel]

Thanks guys i've started by low dosing the tank. 5 tsp and will test in an hour. I have plenty of PH test solution and don't use it often so would rather inch it up than jump past the point i'm aiming for and end up messing up my cycle more than just leaving it be.

Does water hardness or i think it's kh affect tropical fish/plants or does it become sort of irrelevant after you finished your fishless cycle. Is it worth testing once just to know what sort of water you have or is it the sort of thing you should buy a test kit for ?

 

[anon02]

Thanks guys i've started by low dosing the tank. 5 tsp and will test in an hour. I have plenty of PH test solution and don't use it often so would rather inch it up than jump past the point i'm aiming for and end up messing up my cycle more than just leaving it be.

Does water hardness or i think it's kh affect tropical fish/plants or does it become sort of irrelevant after you finished your fishless cycle. Is it worth testing once just to know what sort of water you have or is it the sort of thing you should buy a test kit for ?

I only altered the KH to prevent a stall, it all goes when you do the big water change at the end of cycling. Most keepers find it easiest to match the type of fish they keep to the water they have from the tap rather than messing with the KH and pH

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, this is very good advice from anon02. Its an important consideration to have a feel for your local tap water parameters and to be thinking about what sort of tank and fish would go well based on that. As a crude example, people with very acid, soft water might enjoy having neons and angels thrive, whereas people with hard, basic water might be happy having mollies and other livebearers. Most common tropicals that we buy at the LFS will do quite well in a variety of water types as long as the parameters are kept stable, but there are a few examples out there of fish that do well in more extreme water types. Since doing healthy-sized weekly water changes is a great way to maintain a tank, keeping water parameters stable during these changes means having tank water that is similar to your tap water. Altering the water parameters artificially sets you up to fail at some later point usually.

Its fine to measure tap water parameters and go ahead and get that prominently listed in your aquarium notebook. But don't try to judge what the various water parameters of your tank will be like until after the fishless cycle is over. A fishless cycling tank is way off from what the cycled and stocked tank may be like. I wouldn't go for a GH/KH kit unless you are pushed to do so later on by circumstances, instead give things some time. If there's a real need it will become obvious.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[drobbyb]

Yes, agree completely with waterdrop. In the area that waterdrop and I are from, the water is unusually low in mineral content. This makes the water very soft (0 KH from the tap in my area) and this makes keeping fish successfully a little more difficult, especially if you want to keep fish from the rift lakes of Africa since having such soft water can result in pH swings. We really have to keep an eye on things.

There are several methods for dealing with this, but before you get into them you need to cycle your tank. Using baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is the preferred method of increasing your pH during a fishless cycle, but it's not for after your cycle. Baking soda can raise your pH VERY quickly (it raises the pH by increasing your KH, or carbonate hardness (KH)), so quickly that you can subject your fish to hardness shock (also known as pH shock). When I want to cycle a tank, I automatically add baking soda to get my pH in the optimal range that Skins has provided.

It sounds much harder than it actually is!