Maintaining the pH when trying to alter the params from one's tap is chemistry. Normally our tap water tends to be somewhat stable. It depends on the source. Most of the people here are using municipal water supply. Some of us have private wells. So how stable the numbers are controlled differently.
A municipal supplier may have to do things to keep the water up to the standards they need and they may change from using chlorine to using chloramine, They beed to change parameters due to needs are their side. Nitrification is a perfect example. They may change them temporarily to achieve a specific end. They may announce this in advance or they may not.
In orer for me to lower my TDS and pH from my tap reuired O learn the chemistry involved. This requires we have feedback on what is in the water and this is where the issues begin. In order for me to control the parameter for the Altums I needed to have decent digital testing equipment. There is a limiot to what we can measure,
I tried doing it with the API test kits and even a digital pH tester. This was not sufficient. I ended up with a three way continuous monitor. It let me see numbers for conductivity in microsiemens, or in one of two TDS measurments using two different ppm conversion scales. I can make sense of the ppms better than the conductivity number so I use TDS, Next, I could get the water temperatre readins in either F or C and being an American it was F. The final readings were for pH.
The most important part of making sense of pH levels and keeping these f=withing the desired range relies mostly on KH. In our tanks this is mostly influenced by carbonates and bicarbonates. One might think that these are only involved with the pH. This is not the case. The cycling related microorganisms ned inoorganic carbon. The get this from bith CO2 and the carbonates and bicarbonates, But, is doesn't end there. Plants can also use these things.
Yhis means there are more variables involved than just what effects the levels. When we want to lower TDS and pH we do so primarily by dealing with KH. For this we need a KH test kit. I used an RO/DI unit which makes purer water than just an RO unit only. However, the DI part was my decision to make and was not essential. The key to my succeeding was my ability to know the parameters I mentioned above on a fairly constant basis. A quick glance at the digital readouts from my continuous monitor supplied these on an ongoing basis.
While I wanted the pH at 6.0 and never as high as 6.5, I had to pay attention. what happeed for me was from week to week going into water chnages etc. th pH tended to rise towards 6.5. WHen the time came to do a water change I needed to pre-,ix my tap and my RO/Di components for the changing water based on the numbers at the time. To control the pH I needed to lower the nubers for the water going back into the tank. I used muriatic acid or baking soda to fine tune the new water. The goal was simple, I wanted the tank water to be in the 6.0 range. This meant I often needed the new water to be below 60 by a bit.
Also, I was doing stained water whhic makes using colormetric test kits was not possible and why I had the digital monitor. I batched the new water next to the tank and would move the probes from the tank to the new water I was setting up. This made the process a lot easier for me.
When I began my tap parameters were such that a 50/50 RO/DI to tap worked fine. But my well water parameters were subject to change based on drought conditions or the lack of them. Lots of rain over a shortish period (wweks) or no rain at all for an extended period change the tap parameters. Since I did not have any plants in the tank, this made things somewhat easier. It meant the KH levels were a bit easier to keep where I needed them.
The most basic part of KH is how it works. KH is often referrred to as temporary hardness. The way KH keeps [H stabe is from its ability to absorn the acids in water. A kigher KH hold up basic numbers. One way to undersatnd how KH levels work is to think of it like a sponge. As acids try to lower the pH, the KH "absorbs" the acid and prevent the drop. But there is a limit and once the KH as dome all it can, more acid than oit can control will then start to drop the pH and do so more rapidly.
What this means is that the key to hold anu pH level depends ton the KH levels. Muritaic acid drops pH and baking sode raises it. The problem with the baking soda is that ir has a tendency to drive the pH towards a stability level in the 8.3 range. So, when I need a bit of a bump up in pH because I had dropped it a bit to low, I would use a small amount of baking soda to fix that, I needed to make sure I did not go beyond what I needed to fix the pH such that I raised it because i added too much.
As you can see, there is a lot of chemistry going on and the more complex a tank is in thes respect, the harder it becomes to control. Stabilty of the numbers becomes the challenge.
In the time I bagab dealing with this I learned that what is considered to be gospel when it comes to changing pH by more than 0.1 or 0.2 should be avoided as it would be harmful to the fish. And then I went to buy my first Altums from a gent who had a bsement fish room filled with acid water fish. He had a full time job and this was his side thing. He imported a lot of the fish he sold. Because of his jon his wife helped him with maintaining the tanks.
His wife would only do the water changes but did not deal with the paramters. This was left to him. As I tourder his fish room on the Stayrdat when I ent toi buy my angels, he was doing the chemistry part. He had a battery powerd digital mnitor. I watched him put the probes into a tank, saw the reading for pH which was too high and what he did next blew up the idea that limiting the amount of change to pH which could be done.
He addeed enough acid do the tank such that within 5 minutes he lowered the pH by 1.10. I watched the fish and they showed no siugn of distress etc. And this was when I learned that there are few universals when it comes to this stuff. Some time after I got my angels and was keeping them I actually did a few drops in pH of 1.0 in the same way. What I can also say is that dropping the pH for acid water fish works OK for some species, However, going in the other direction I am not so sure such a large change would be handled by fish needing more basic pH nu,ber would be so safe.
What does this mean for the situation here? What I learned was that I needed to master it all by working a bit gradually. Since I could measure the tank number I could get an idea of what I needed them to be for the new water to correct them tanl parameters back toeard my pH 6.0 pH and 50 - 60 pppm TDS. By moving the probes from the tank to the new water container. I could make the needed changes. The problem was I had to estimate how much acid I needed to add to the changing water to priduce the numbers I needed. So I tried to do it by adding what I felt was the right amount of acid and then waiting for the effect to show up on the monitor.
If i did not lower the pH by enough, I added a bit more. When I added to much i then added a pnch of baking soda to fix it. The problem with all of this was how things progressed as I batched the new water. RO/DI water has 0 kh and it has a fairly low GH which does effect TDS.
In theory, pur water should have 0 hardenss and a neutral pH. And coming out of the unit it does. But then it mixes with the air which contains CO2. CO2 in water creates cabonic acid and acid lower pH. So that 7.0 is soon dropping as a result. More xhemistry at work. Since a lot of what we may try to do in a tank interms of parameters is more complex than we imagined when we first start with all of this, it took me time to learn what I was doing and how to make is work with the least effort and making the fewest mistakes.
This is the challenge here. For me it was only involved with one tank. the other 19 tanks run on pure well water year round unless something changes. My water changes over time based on drought coconditons or a lack thereof. Over the years my tap pH has been as low as bout 6.8 and as high as 7.3. My well water come in with a higher than normal level of CO2/ Once this has outgassed and come into balance with tha air, the pH rading is finally accurate and somewhat stable.
Under normal condtitions my tap pH is 7.0 and my TDS are about 83 ppm. But over the years these numbers change as indicated. My lowest TDS reading ihas been in the low 50s and as high as close to 120 ppm. This meant my best friend became my digital 3-way continuous monitor. Without this I would have failed to do things as they needed to be done. I am lucky in that I have the ability to spend the money I needed to get the tools I had to have. My monitor cost me about $150 to $175. But to manage things I also needed to callibrate the monitor regularly using reference solutions. I have them for acid, neutral and basic water readings.
Every few months I had to recalibrate the setting on the monitor. For the lowering I did I would callibrate at 4.0 and 7.0. Were I going in the other direction it would be 10 and 7.
This all may ssound a bit intimidating. it is not as hard or difficult as it lookes based on all of the above. What I needed was to have an undersatnding of basic water chemistry and then some caeful trial and error learning until I figured it out. Unless it is an emergecny, we can work somewhat slowly at first and get the feedback we need to learn what we should be doing. It is better to make a mistake on the too little change side and have to add more or less amount oof what e use to contol things. When the goal was to lower the pH ny 1.0 one can drop it by less and then add more acid to hit the target, On the other hand dropping the pH by too much means we have to correct things in the opposite direction.
Over time as I got better at doing things, it became easier toget the desired numbers in fewer steps. Sometimes the pH in the tanks would drift towards 6.5 faster and I needed to change the pH in the tank before it was time for the weekly water changes etc. In such cases I would add a bit of muriatic acid directly to the tank to make a 0.3 change wheras during noirmal maint. I owuld be adding 5.6 or 5.7 ph changing water.
What you need to do is to learn by doing. the key is underdo rather than over do. it is a lot easier to add a bit of acid which turns out to be no enough and then have to add more than if you add to much and them have to reverse this. Unfortunately, different acid water fish will handle things differently. The fish you want to keep may not handle the sort of full 1 .0 changein pH rapidy than my Angels did. Or maybe they can. I cannot help you in terms of saying if you do what I did will be the right way for you to do so with your species.
What I can tell you is experiment, work somewhat slowly at first until you learn what is the best way to get the results your fish need. They key to all of this is having the tolls you need to measure things accurately and then to implement changes a bit more gradually than you will be doing a few months down the road. I made mistakes when I first began chaning my parameters and you will likely do so as well. The key is it is OJ to make a small mistake but to avcoid a big one. If you need to drop your pH by 0.5, it is ok to do it in two or even three steps rather than a single one which changes things by a lot more and which may have a bad result.
There used to be a really good site I would send folks to to help understand all of this. However, it seems to have shut. They had a really good section on water chemistry and was where i leared the basics. It was a more modern version of one of the earliest sites for this stuff called thekrib.com. This still exists but I have never used it. it may help you to go here
https://www.thekrib.com/Plants/CO2/
I am hppy to try and help you if you get stuck or have questions. However, having accurate test reaedings rquires one have the needed testing stuff to do so. The monitor I used has been modernized. Today it is harder to gind without wireless. I do not use a smart phone and my equipment was purchased before it came with this capacity.
I used the Blue Lab Guardian Monitor. it is hard to find in the non-WiGi version. But no WiFi makes it much cheaper.
The
Bluelab Guardian Monitor Wi-Fi is designed to operate as a standalone, non-Wi-Fi unit if preferred, allowing for continuous, on-site monitoring of pH, EC, and temperature without internet connection. The Wi-Fi capability can be completely disabled in the settings, and older or dedicated non-Wi-Fi models (like standard or older XPeel versions) are also available.
