james_fish
Chuck, Leader Of Ze People.
Hello everyone;
I'm 21 days into a fishless cycle in a 200 litre tank, and things to seem to be going extremely well.
Yesterday I added 3ppm of liquid ammonia and todays results showed 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite which is very promising after 21 days.
However,
I'm having some extreme difficulty maintaining a constant pH level.
for the first 8 days or so my tank stayed at around 6.8 pH which was fine, I can live with that.
However shortly after it crashed to 6.0 (or below) - so naturally, I acted straight away by doing a water change of about 40% to try and pump it back up a little, 24h later it hadn't worked. So I added 3 teaspoons of bicarbonate soda, this did work - I got it up to 7.6. This is higher than what I'll want when I add fish (south american community) but fine whilst I carry out the cycle.
Fast forward to day 20, I do another 40% water change, just to lower nitrates and "freshen" up the water if you like.
Fast forward to now, day 21 - I water test the pH and it has ROCKETED to over 8.0 - which has really unnerved me, if anything I thought the pH would have gone down, since I was taking away some of the soda bicarbonate I dosed on day 10. So i'm stuck now, trumped, no idea where to take it from here.
Any tips or advice? my instant tap pH is 7.2, and the water in my area is soft-very soft according to the water board.
TIA
James.
I'm 21 days into a fishless cycle in a 200 litre tank, and things to seem to be going extremely well.
Yesterday I added 3ppm of liquid ammonia and todays results showed 0 ammonia and 0 nitrite which is very promising after 21 days.
However,
I'm having some extreme difficulty maintaining a constant pH level.
for the first 8 days or so my tank stayed at around 6.8 pH which was fine, I can live with that.
However shortly after it crashed to 6.0 (or below) - so naturally, I acted straight away by doing a water change of about 40% to try and pump it back up a little, 24h later it hadn't worked. So I added 3 teaspoons of bicarbonate soda, this did work - I got it up to 7.6. This is higher than what I'll want when I add fish (south american community) but fine whilst I carry out the cycle.
Fast forward to day 20, I do another 40% water change, just to lower nitrates and "freshen" up the water if you like.
Fast forward to now, day 21 - I water test the pH and it has ROCKETED to over 8.0 - which has really unnerved me, if anything I thought the pH would have gone down, since I was taking away some of the soda bicarbonate I dosed on day 10. So i'm stuck now, trumped, no idea where to take it from here.
Any tips or advice? my instant tap pH is 7.2, and the water in my area is soft-very soft according to the water board.
TIA
James.