Quick Question On Ph And Hardness

[kimon201]

Hey guys, so last year I ran 2 tanks. (20 and 15 gallon) and i was given a 30 gallon last week. My tank is empty and going through the bacteria growth and is looking good but I have a question. The last two tanks I had both ended up getting ruined because in literally one day my PH and hardness completely dropped. My PH and Hardness went from perfect to SUPER LOW in 24 hours. I have tablets I add weekly to deal with PH but I was wondering how I could prevent this. Also how do I keep the hardness up and stop it from dropping? Thanks a lot!

 

[Christoff]

Hey guys, so last year I ran 2 tanks. (20 and 15 gallon) and i was given a 30 gallon last week. My tank is empty and going through the bacteria growth and is looking good but I have a question. The last two tanks I had both ended up getting ruined because in literally one day my PH and hardness completely dropped. My PH and Hardness went from perfect to SUPER LOW in 24 hours. I have tablets I add weekly to deal with PH but I was wondering how I could prevent this. Also how do I keep the hardness up and stop it from dropping? Thanks a lot!

Hi and welcome. Your pH won't have dropped for no reason and there are a couple of possibilities that I can think of. First is that you've got rocks or something else in your tank that is reacting with the water and changing the pH. Second is that the co2 in the tap water is gassing off after a while and changing the pH. What is the pH of the water out of your tap? And what do you mean by perfect and super low? I'd be reluctant to add stuff to the water to change the pH until you know what's changing it. But there are steps you can take to raise it, such as using coral sand.