vonjankmon
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I have a new planted tank and I used Malaya ADA substrate in it, the tank has been cycling for more than a month now due to how much Ammonia ADA substrates put into the water but it's finally getting close to being cycled, ammonia is hanging between 0.25-0.5 now.
Unfortunately even if it cycles soon I don't feel comfortable putting fish in it because of the very low PH. Anywhere between 5.5-5.3 depending on whether my CO2 Injection is running or not. All my plants in it are doing great, I had a crypt melt but it took them just over a day to begin growing back. The water is extremely soft, again due to the ADA substrate, my GH is about 4 degrees while my KH is 0, or so close to it my test can't tell.
I've done a few water changes on the tank to try and raise the PH as the PH of my water is around 7.5. I didn't really want to do this as I know it is probably one of the reasons my tank has taken so long to cycle but the PH issue has been bothering me. When I do a water change of about 15-20% the PH in the tank will increase to around 6.5-6.7 but in the space of just 3-5 hours the PH has gone right back down to 5.5 or there abouts where the ADA substrate is just holding it.
So my next attempt was getting some calcium carbonate powder and adding that to the tank in hopes of raising the hardness (both KH and GH) a bit so that when I did a water change the PH may hold a bit high. That didn't really work, my GH ended up a bit higher than it was but in the span of a couple of days my KH was back to 0 or near enough and while it might of taken a bit longer for the PH to drop back to 5.5 it did so even with the calcium carbonate powder. Now I haven't added a lot of the powder, adding more may eventually get me to the affect I want but I had two concerns here, one I didn't really know what the affect of adding a lot would be so didn't want to do it, and while it raised the GH a bit it didn't raise the KH, and I was hesitant to keep adding to where I had the GH level of having hardwater but the KH of soft, again not sure what the implications of that would be.
So here I am, I need some help because I'm really at the end of my knowledge base here. A PH of 5.5 seems WAY to low for my fish, now they are Gourmai's (Kissing, Golden, Opaline), Paradise fish, and Tiger Bards so they can handle a low PH but I can't imagine they could handle 5.5 or even the 5.3 when my CO2 is running. But I can not for the life of me raise the PH to a stable higher level. I've probably done about 6-7 15-20% water changes on the tank over the past month and there is some driftwood in the tank but it was heavily boiled/soaked before going it and some of it was in another tank before my planted one and it did not lower the PH to such extremes; for some extra background info. And I have a PH monitor so I can get a constant live read on my PH levels.
Any help would be extremely welcome, especially from someone else who has used ADA substrate because you've probably had to deal with what I am and I would like to know how you over came it. I'm a bit frustrated right now with the entire situation since I've put so much time and money into this tank.
Unfortunately even if it cycles soon I don't feel comfortable putting fish in it because of the very low PH. Anywhere between 5.5-5.3 depending on whether my CO2 Injection is running or not. All my plants in it are doing great, I had a crypt melt but it took them just over a day to begin growing back. The water is extremely soft, again due to the ADA substrate, my GH is about 4 degrees while my KH is 0, or so close to it my test can't tell.
I've done a few water changes on the tank to try and raise the PH as the PH of my water is around 7.5. I didn't really want to do this as I know it is probably one of the reasons my tank has taken so long to cycle but the PH issue has been bothering me. When I do a water change of about 15-20% the PH in the tank will increase to around 6.5-6.7 but in the space of just 3-5 hours the PH has gone right back down to 5.5 or there abouts where the ADA substrate is just holding it.
So my next attempt was getting some calcium carbonate powder and adding that to the tank in hopes of raising the hardness (both KH and GH) a bit so that when I did a water change the PH may hold a bit high. That didn't really work, my GH ended up a bit higher than it was but in the span of a couple of days my KH was back to 0 or near enough and while it might of taken a bit longer for the PH to drop back to 5.5 it did so even with the calcium carbonate powder. Now I haven't added a lot of the powder, adding more may eventually get me to the affect I want but I had two concerns here, one I didn't really know what the affect of adding a lot would be so didn't want to do it, and while it raised the GH a bit it didn't raise the KH, and I was hesitant to keep adding to where I had the GH level of having hardwater but the KH of soft, again not sure what the implications of that would be.
So here I am, I need some help because I'm really at the end of my knowledge base here. A PH of 5.5 seems WAY to low for my fish, now they are Gourmai's (Kissing, Golden, Opaline), Paradise fish, and Tiger Bards so they can handle a low PH but I can't imagine they could handle 5.5 or even the 5.3 when my CO2 is running. But I can not for the life of me raise the PH to a stable higher level. I've probably done about 6-7 15-20% water changes on the tank over the past month and there is some driftwood in the tank but it was heavily boiled/soaked before going it and some of it was in another tank before my planted one and it did not lower the PH to such extremes; for some extra background info. And I have a PH monitor so I can get a constant live read on my PH levels.
Any help would be extremely welcome, especially from someone else who has used ADA substrate because you've probably had to deal with what I am and I would like to know how you over came it. I'm a bit frustrated right now with the entire situation since I've put so much time and money into this tank.
