Ph 4

[KpT]

HEY

RANDOMLY I REALLY WANT TO SEE HOW MY GERMAN RAMS BEHAVE IF I GIVE THEM WATERS WITH PH4

WEIRDLY I AM NOT CONVINCED THIS IS POSSIBLE

ACCORDING TO MOST, REDUCING PH IS:

ANNOYING
POINTLESS
ETC
ETC

but im just so curious!!

Surely if theres only my pair of rams in there i can dedicate this experiment to them and not want to harmt hem in anyway.

The onyl reason is becasue i have heard many times that rams comes from those ranges and it would be a shame not to replicate them

CHEERS

SAM

 

[rabbut]

That would be a massive risk to the fish to say the least. Most rams are trade bred, so will NEVER have seen a pH below 7 in their life prior to your tanks. The pH scale is logarithmic, so a drop of 3 points is a massive difference and would need to be done over many days to avoid pH shock to any fish. To drop the pH to somewhere near that low, you would end up wipeing the biological filters, as the beneficial filter bacteria die off below a pH of 5 I think it is from memory (could be 5.5), so you'd be experimenting effectively without a filter to keep the tank going. To keep the pH that low and stable would take very little hardness, so you will put the fishes bodies under immence osmotic pressure compaired to what they are used to.

To sum up, in the unlikely even that they survive this abuse (assuming tank bred fish here), they will be extreamly stressed and it won't take long for the diseases set in.

If you can find some wild rams, from the areas you have those numbers from, at the time of year when those numbers are correct, then you could try it, but only if you wanted to do this long-term. In all other cases, the risks far outweigh any benefit, even to wild stocks The "safe" range for pH in a tank is 6.5 to 7.5 for most common tropicals. There are a few tetras and other things that need a lower pH for breeding, but even then, it is very unusual to have to go below pH 6

All the best
Rabbut

 

[Truck]

PH4! that is relitavly acidic. thats about 180 times stronger than ph7 or neutral. as you increase a ph or decrease a ph you times the ph is timesed by six. this may sound confusing. its this basicly

ph7 = neutral
ph6 = 6 times stronger than neutral
ph5 = 6 times stronger than ph6
ph4 = 6 times stronger than ph5 etc

 

[Mr Bliss]

How would you do this? In natural blackwater, the low pH is due to a low or non-existent KH. Are you going to use RO water, or boil all your water before it goes to the tank? Pushing your pH down to 4 just by adding some kind of an acid (for example, overdosing peat extract) to the water would not be the same thing at all, and could be deadly to your fish.

Also be aware that nitrifying bacteria work poorly at low pH, and once your KH hits 0, your biological filter will cease to function and all your filter bacteria will die off, since they are unable to use any other carbon sources than bicarbonate (ie. KH). You would have to maintain a pretty extreme water change regime to compensate for this, given how intolerant rams are of nitrites; basically treat the tank as if you were fish-in cycling forever. Seems like a massive amount of trouble for no good reason.

In any case, I wouldn't go to such extremes. The rams you get these days have been captive-bred for generations, and are used to more neutral water conditions than wild-caught fish. I don't think going below 5.0 - 5.5 is reasonable even in a blackwater biotope tank.

 

[jonnyf84]

this is a bad idea, rams are not hardy fish and they will probably suffer.

Before i put fish in my fry tub to keep it running i had a ph of 5 a week after a water change, i have tap water with a KH of 0-1 (absolute bloody nightmare), to get it to 4 would be hard and is completely pointless - many members on this forum will tell you your rams will not do well in these conditions so there is simply no point.

 

[Truck]

this is pointless. and dangerous. you run the risk of a tank crash dead rams etc

 

[Mikaila31]

PH4! that is relitavly acidic. thats about 180 times stronger than ph7 or neutral. as you increase a ph or decrease a ph you times the ph is timesed by six. this may sound confusing. its this basicly

ph7 = neutral
ph6 = 6 times stronger than neutral
ph5 = 6 times stronger than ph6
ph4 = 6 times stronger than ph5 etc

I was going to say the same thing. Acid rain on average has a ph of about 5. So a ph of 4 is not something most fish would ever encounter even in the wilds.

 

[minxfishy]

Please as others have said, do not try this. Rams are extremely sensitive fish and will not tolerate a large drop in the ph. Rams are said to thrive best in ph 6.6 - 7.4, so I see absolutely no reason to lower your ph that much.

 

[Truck]

and look what acid rain used to do to cars before they were dipped in zinc. it rotted them

its the equavelant of putting your fish in 0.1mole of hydrochloric acid

 

[KpT]

Okay i get it

Was just an idea

My source of information is here

A top result

http/fish.mongabay.com/biotope_amazon_blackwater.htm

It says 4.5

So was just thinking

 

[KpT]

OKAY, HERES AN UPDATE:

PH=6 (i was told if my PH was neutral and i injected C02 it would go down 1 and no more)
GH=2-4
KH (still unknown as strips are terrible and the COLUMBUS test kit i found seems faulty
BPM=14 per min, 1 roughly per 4-5 secs, may slow soon due to it being DIY
Nitrites=0
nitrate-0.25
amomnia=0
amomnium=.0.04

RAMS BEHAVIOUR= Fine, same as normal, the male casually chases the female for a bit , otherwise they swim together and show off their colours.
(Btw..will their colours stand out more if i put more greenery in the tank cuz they seem to when next to the amazon sword)

NOTE: This has been done to see if my source @
http/fish.mongabay.com/biotope_amazon_blackwater.htm
was correct or not as regards to rams liking 4.5..Everythign is being done slwoly and carefully with full consideration, do not mistake my madness for carelessness please.


AMAZON SWORD: Looks fairly healthy, only got it on sunday.. Any tips as to keeping this baby growing nicely would be greatly appreciated.
Stuff done so far for it:
Added in 6 iron pegs to the gravel of the pot
Put a bed of laterite in the bottom of the pot
Going to buy some ferts with magnesium
Lighting is fairly standard
Co2 injection as above
Will probabaly move plant out of pot soon to an embankment at the back of tank amde of gravel.

KH? Personally becasue of the tanks i have tried to make i hate KH and would rather change water daily to create natural habitat than have BUFFER in the water but i am forced to have some thna im thinking how low can i have it to make moving PH easy but still having it high enough to stop a PH crash.

PH 4: If i am to aim for 4.5, how would i get the PH to go below 6 from here

THIS LITTLE EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN TO LET OTHER BIOTOPERS SEE THAT IT MIGHT BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE EXACT NOT NEARLY.

THANKS

SAM

 

[KpT]

UPDATE 2

OKay so the recommended PH 4.5-6.5 from
http/fish.mongabay.com/biotope_amazon_blackwater.htm
Was a bad idea to go to the lower end.

So ill chnage subject a little as i just wanted to know, now that all my parameters are fine, has anyone got any tips on how i can use:

8 peices of bogwood
4 stones
1 cave
7 seperate amazon fake plants
1 real amazon sword
some moss balls
some java moss

To aquascape my tank in the best way???

My only idea at the moment is to make the ridge at the back of the tank by mixing some gravel and laterite in with the sand to make the substrate deeper at the back of the tank for the amazon to grow in.
So ill be taking the amazon out of the pot probably.

Thanks

Sam

PS: I have forgotten how to treat bogwood before placing it in the tank, ive purchased one extra piece today with helping to push up the ridge at the back of the tank and im not sure.

I soaked the peices last time but if i want the affects of the bogwood then shud i just rinse the peice to get rid of dust??

 

[KpT]

Hey everyone

Right

So i didnt have anything to test for KH
The strips were rubbish
And my COLUMBUS drop tester was falso..

OR SO I THOUGHT

I just gave it one last go and after adding two drops the water was basically really pale yellow.

After adding one drop its supposed to go blue, then after another so many drops it goes yellow which tells you how high the KH is.

So i put some of my mineral powder in it to raise the KH

And when i put the drops in this time ther water turned blue.

So ive come to the conclusion that my KH is 0

 

[Truck]

i hope you have no snails as there shells will disintegrate

 

[hellohefalump]

get some chocolate gouramis. They love acid water.