Is It Worth Trying To Stabilise Ph?

[ellena]

I'm near the end of a fishless cycle, but won't be adding fish until end of July due to a holiday. I've had a few pH crashes throughout the cycle but now it's near the end and it's processing a lot of ammonia each day, it's crashing every 4 days or so.
I've tested my water and it's KH of 5 and GH off the scale.
Is it worth trying to add something to increase KH and so stabilise pH?

 

[OldMan47]

Once there are fish in the tank, you will not need to do quite as many water changes to hold the KH and pH up. If you are going to keep the tank cycled by continuing to dose with ammonia, it would be less work to just add in some baking soda. When it is time to add the fish, do your huge water change and you will remove the baking soda along with the nitrates and be ready to go.

 

[ellena]

Right, that sounds like a plan, thank you. Is there a guide to how much to dose? I'll get some sodium hydrogen carbonate from work next week

 

[drobbyb]

http/dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/calKH.asp

 

[snowflake311]

Yes you need to bring the ph up or your tank will not cycle right or will stop. The good bacteria you want can not do its thing unless the ph is 7 or higher. I had this happen to me. my ph crashed and it took way longer for it to finish . once i got the ph back up all was good.

 

[ellena]

Thanks for that link drobbyb, I'll work out how much I need tonight. It mentions raising it slowly-I presume this is with fish in. Can I raise it in one go as there are only bacteria in there?

 

[backtotropical]

The good bacteria you want can not do its thing unless the ph is 7 or higher.

Not quite. The cycle will start to stall when the pH gets down to around 6.0 - 6.2. If it gets down to around 5.5, the bacteria will start to die. A pH of say 6.8, whilst not ideal, would be absolutely fine.

Timothy Hovanec found in his research that the optimum pH for cycling is between 8.0 - 8.4.

Thanks for that link drobbyb, I'll work out how much I need tonight. It mentions raising it slowly-I presume this is with fish in. Can I raise it in one go as there are only bacteria in there?

Yes, you can raise it in one go if your tank is fishless. The reference to raising it slowly is referring to tanks with fish, as large pH (and more importantly hardness) swings can be detrimental to the health of the fish.

Cheers

BTT