ph levels

[silkworm]

Hi

Haven't posted on here for a while but hoping you guys and girls can help me.

I have a trigon 350 tank which has been up and running for a year now. I am a bit worried about my ph reading which is 5.0.

My girlfriend asked in the local aquarium centre today for some ph upper on my behalf and was told by the chap in the shop that he wished he had a ph reading of 5.0 and it was nothing to worry about. He suggested taking the piece of bogwood out of the tank for a while and the ph level should gradually rise.

Is this good advise as I thought the reading should be somewhere closer to 7.0. I have a wide variety of fish in the tank including 2 parrot fish a couple of angels, some plecos, sowrdtails, clown loaches and silver sharks.

All other reading in my tank regardibng nitrate, nitrite and amonia are all perfect.

Your help and advise would be appreciated - at the moment the fish look pretty content - no signs of illness or sucking at the top of the tank

thanks in advance

 

[black angel]

whats the ph from your tap reading. to get a proper reading put the water in a cup before testing

 

[silkworm]

the tap water is 7.5 and my tank ph is giving a reading of 6 today. Although I had noticed wome white spot on the parrot fish yesterday so treated the tank accordingly with white spot chemical

 

[silkworm]

thats meant to say some white spot not wome - sorry!!

 

[Yenko]

Are you adding Co2?

If you are, too much CO2 is your problem.

If you aren't, then excess nitrate is probably lowering your PH; buy/use a nitrate test kit to make sure the nitrate levels are less than 50 ppm.

 

[CFC]

The pH dropping by 2.5 is quite worrying and needs to be dealt with, fluctuating pH is a major cause of stress to fish which is the main cause for illnesses and death.

pH drops can be caused by a number of factors but the main two are either that water changes are not being done often enough to replace the buffers that are used up by organic acids released during the nitrification process or that the source water has a low buffering capacity (KH) which allows the pH to be changed easily. To go any further towards fixing your pH problem you will need to test your tapwater to see what its KH value is, ideally you want this to read at around 7 and anything below 4 will need buffering with bicarbonate of soda or a shop bought buffering powder.

 

[silkworm]

the levels of nitrate are well below 50

How often should I be carrying out a water change ?? - at the moment i do a third water change every 2 months - is that enough

I am not adding co2

Thanks for your help so far

 

[SarahBravo]

I think you're not doing water changes often enough, especially if the ph in you tap water is higher than your tank, just as CFC said. I try to do mine once a week, but i suppose i do 25% every two weeks on average.

Sarah

 

[silkworm]

thanks - i will try that starting from tomorrow

 

[CFC]

Depending on stocking levels i would recomend changing between 10 and 30% of the water every week, since your tank is stocked with mainly large fairly messy fish i would suggest that you stick to the higher side of this recomendation and change at least 20% of the water weekly.

 

[silkworm]

Thanks for all your help Girls and Guys - great forum - sure to return soon