Ph Levels

[scotty]

i started my fishless cycle two days ago my ph levels have went from 7.4 to 8.4 since adding the ammonia,do i have to add something to lower this,or will it lower by itself? i have api test kit do i use both the high and ordinary ph tests?
thanks
scott

 

[scotty]

anyone able to help?

 

[OldMan47]

Ammonia that we buy in liquid form is actually a solution of ammonium hydroxide which moves the pH up nicely. There is no need to lower your pH, it will be fine at 8.4. The "ideal" conditions for a fishless cycle are 8.0 to 8.5 pH and temperature in the low to mid 80s F. That is 27 to 30C.
You use both tests until you know where your pH falls. If you have a pH of 8.0, there is not much point in using the low range to find out you really need to use the high range, you already know that. If your high range reading is at the minimum, try the low range to make sure it is not much lower than the 7.4 minimum on the high range test.

 

[scotty]

thanks for that,put mind mind at rest,thought something had went wrong,will the ph level drop eventually

 

[OldMan47]

If your pH moved up that easily, you will need to watch it. It makes me suspicious that your pH buffering in your tap water is quite low. That is not a problem unless it starts to drop too far. The cycle will stall at around 6.2 pH. If it starts moving like that, the best way to bring it back up is often nothing more elaborate than a water change.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, agree with this. The overall long-range direction that the fishless cycle will push is downwards. This is because the end product of nitrite(NO2) being transformed into nitrate(NO3) by the N-Bacs (nitrite oxidizing bacteria) is a couple of hydrogen ions (H+) as well as the nitrate ion (NO3-) and some of those plus ions will manage to link up with the negative ions and form HNO3, nitric acid, a strong acid which will push the pH in the acid direction.

In tap water, some of the mineral content can participate in reactions that neutralize the acid effect but as they do this, they get used up. As OM47 mentioned above, if your pH was able to move easily up a whole point from 7.4 to 8.4 just by the addition of ammonia, this may indicate that not many of these "neutralizing" minerals happen to be available in your water. Thus it will pay off to make pH a regular (although not necessarily daily) measurement along the course of your fishless cycle. As you get on the lower side of 7, the fishless cycling process will get slower and slower until about 6.2, where you may not see any progress at all. As OM47 wrote, at some point when the pH gets down there, a large water change will remedy the situation.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scotty]

forgot to add my ammonia levels are sitting at 8.0ppm,is this too high,i only put the amount of ammonia in,that i got from the calculator on this site.

 

[waterdrop]

Scotty, if you really feel, or even suspect, that the level of your added ammonia has reached 8.0 then yes, that's too high. At about 8.0ppm, the wrong species of A-Bac (ammonia oxidizing bacteria) is enouraged to grow, rather than the type of A-Bac we want. You need to do a 50% water change, re-measure your ammonia level and work your way back to 4-5ppm from there.

Its of course impossible for the ammonia calculator to be right for your individual tank because actual ammonia percentage of the aqueous ammonia is unlikely to be the same as what's printed on the bottle. The ammonia is a gas and starts escaping as soon as the bottle is opened. Some manufacturers take this into account and start it higher than whatever they print, some don't. It really doesn't matter as one should always initially dose low and then work upwards via multiple tests to arrive at a good dosing amount.

Don't worry though, it would take lots of days at ammonia=8ppm for the wrong bacteria to start growing, so as long as you get back down to what looks like 4ppm on your liquid test then things will be fine.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scotty]

that's the 50% water change done,when should i do the ammonia test again?

 

[waterdrop]

that's the 50% water change done,when should i do the ammonia test again?

After a water change, the followup test that would be accurate varies a lot in different aquariums, depending primarily on circulation. For instance, at one extreme you might have an aquarium with a huge cannister filter that blows huge amounts of water constantly through the aquarium whereas at the other extreme years ago you might have had a very still aquarium, like a pond, with a little internal bubble filter that hardly moved the water. Yours of course will be somewhere in-between but this is why we just guess at numbers like 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour. Perhaps 20 minutes would be a good blind choice to make for the water having mixed nicely. Certainly by an hour (but of course as the times get longer the bacteria may have eaten a bit of it!)

It may take you a number of ammonia dosings to home in on the right number of milliliters to be squirting in to consistantly bring your tank up to 4ppm or so from zero but eventually you'll settle on a nice amount for your dose. Just be sure to jot everything down in the daily entry of your aquarium notebook (which you have, right? )

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scotty]

that's the ammonia levels down to 4ppm,thanks for the advice

 

[scotty]

ammonia levels still at 4ppm,and ph level is back to 7.4

 

[waterdrop]

Here's a link to member martinkings fishless cycle log where you can see how he added a single new line edited in to the first post each day and the types of information he included in the lines. If you search on his name and look for a post he made with "template" in the title, I think he gave some nice lines to cut/paste to start off your own first post like that.

We'll have to keep watching it but its still looking like your KH is low and your pH will probably have a tendency to drop too much.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[scotty]

WD,that martinking has the patience of a saint.

 

[martinking]

Why thankyou!

Hope yours is going alright!