Water Treatment

[Plecc]

Hi all,
This is my first post, sorry if it's in the wrong section.
I have a new 120L tank, which has been up and running for about three months now.
In the tank is a pair of bristle nose Plecos, 6 tetra, 4 Cory's, 4 platy and now a load of fry. I have been using the API test strips to check the state of water each week, which looks fine although our local water supply is very hard.
The test strips were saying the tank averaged a pH of 7-7.5 but recently dropped to almost 6.5.
A few days ago I got a licorice female fiddler crab ("Uca Pugnax" i think) which i was told by the LFS is happy in a freshwater aquarium without access to the surface, not sure myself but the man i spoke to seamed very knowledgeable.
Unfortunately the crab died within 36 hours, the shop was really helpfully and said to bring in a sample of my tap water and tank water for testing, the test revealed that the tank pH was through the roof at about 8.6 even though the test strips were still saying 6.5-7.
Anyway they gave me a pot of Seachem Neutral Regulator, which conditions the water and adjusts the pH back to 7.0, until the pH spike i have been using Interpet Tapsafe which conditions the water but also removes metals and copper and looks after the fish. Any idea if it's ok to use these two treatments alternate water changes, or am i best off just using the Seachem stuff?
Or is there something i can get that will take care of everything?

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Plecc.
You should only need water changes and tap water conditioner to control the chemicals in your tank. You might as well toss the test strips so that they don't mislead you to think you know your water conditions. We only tend to believe the liquid type test kits here, the ones with little test tubes and all. My own favorite is the API master kit but there are a number of good brand name test kits available. IMO pH is a greatly overrated condition for testing. If you can do enough water changes, the pH o your tank will be close to the pH of your tap water and should not vary too much for the fish. Rapid changes in pH can indeed be difficult for fish to handle but specific values often do not matter much. If your tank is at 8.4 and you add enough of the neutral regulator to get it to 7.0, you will lose more fish. That big a change will be quite hard on them.

 

[Plecc]

Welcome to the forum Plecc.
You should only need water changes and tap water conditioner to control the chemicals in your tank. You might as well toss the test strips so that they don't mislead you to think you know your water conditions. We only tend to believe the liquid type test kits here, the ones with little test tubes and all. My own favorite is the API master kit but there are a number of good brand name test kits available. IMO pH is a greatly overrated condition for testing. If you can do enough water changes, the pH o your tank will be close to the pH of your tap water and should not vary too much for the fish. Rapid changes in pH can indeed be difficult for fish to handle but specific values often do not matter much. If your tank is at 8.4 and you add enough of the neutral regulator to get it to 7.0, you will lose more fish. That big a change will be quite hard on them.

Thanks for the quick reply OldMan47,
Thats a very good point about dropping the pH straight back to 7.0 and shocking the system.
Any idea if i can use the Seachem Neutral Regulator in 1/2 or even 1/4 doses to achieve a gradual drop back to pH 7.0, or do u think i am best off leaving this stuff altogether and just doing more frequent gravel cleaning and water changes just using the regular Tapsafe?

Also what is likely to be the cause of my high pH?
For my substrate i am using fine pea gravel and for ornaments i have quite a few large smoothed rocks the sort you find on a British shingle beach, (none of the rocks are sandy or crumbling) a couple of live plants and three bits of bog wood (which i was told can help reduce pH)

I will get hold of an API master test kit as soon as possible, found a place to get the whole kit including postage for about 18 pound. (bargain!)

Thanks for your help, Plecc.

 

[OldMan47]

Once you get a test kit, measure your tap water pH. If it is much different to the tank pH, something is adding minerals that are moving the pH. The next step after that is to figure out what that is. The most common approach is to place a sample of water in two vessels. In the first you just put water, in the second you put the same water and whatever you suspect is moving the pH. A day or two later you measure the pH in both samples to see if the suspect object was the thing moving the pH. Some smooth round pebbles are limestone which would drive neutral water to over 8.0 pH, but don't draw any such conclusion until you test your water. It is also possible that your water source is from a limestone rock formation and nothing in your tank is moving the water chemistry around. In that case we will need to look at what fish you want to keep and whether we can do anything to actually help them. Very few fish are helped by adding more minerals in the form of something like the neutral regulator. Total mineral content is the main factor affecting most fish that are considered low pH soft water fish. They will do better at an 8.0 pH and appropriately low mineral content than at a 6.5 pH that is being maintained by adding lots of acids to the water as a neutralizer.

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with OM47, its better to be basing your mineral content and pH on your tap water baseline and not using chemicals (even good ones from Seachem) to alter that base.

Its definately possible that either the pea gravel or rocks or both are raising your pH. We generally recommend putting some vinegar on rocks that are brought in from outside to see if they "fizz." That would indicate calcium carbonate content which would slowly dissolve in your water are raise both the hardness and pH. You could also try some jar tests where you put some of the pea gravel in one jar and some of the rocks in another (with tap water that you've noted the starting pH of) and then patiently wait a number of weeks, periodically measuring the pH to see if one of the jars has a change in measurement. Use the pH test in your new liquid kit to do this.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Plecc]

Thanks for the info,
I have some old fashioned scientific litmus test papers that do the whole range up to pH 14, do you think these would be OK to use while i wait for my test kit?
I will give the vinegar test a try first to see if i get any obvious reactions, how long should i wait without seeing any fizzing before i can give a rock the OK?
And then try the jar test if I keep having problems. With the jar test how long should i leave the rocks to know if there OK?

Finally which water conditioner is the best all-rounder for quality and price?

Sry so many questions, just want to be sure.

 

[OldMan47]

I frankly do not trust the quick screening test of looking for fizzing after applying a weak acid. The problem arises when you have something that is not grossly reactive but can still move the pH slowly. The end result is the same but you will not get a reaction from a fizz test. If you do get a fizzing reaction, that rock is completely unsuitable but the reverse cannot be said.

 

[waterdrop]

Its my understanding that vinegar fizz reactions are almost always immediate.

Jar tests like that might take as long as a couple weeks to show anything, but if you are more lucky it might happen sooner!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Plecc]

Thanks for the info, it's been a great help.

I have a feeling that my LFS played me for a fool, since getting my water tested by one of the staff and getting a result of pH 8.6 i have done a single 30% water change.
The original test strips i was using still indicate that my tap and tank water are both around pH 7.0, i then repeated the same test using the new litmus paper and got the same results. (pH 7.0)
So straight away i thought the new litmus papers were also useless, to make sure i repeated the tests with both the test strips and the litmus paper using vinegar and ammonia to simulate high and low Ph. Would you believe it both reacted the same indicating Ph 1.5 for the vinegar and around pH 9.0 for the ammonia.
This makes me fairly sure that the original test strip i have been using were after all giving an accurate reading of my tanks pH, so then i think to myself what are the chances of my tank's pH spiking from neutral up to pH 8.6 an then back to neutral within 48 hours with only a 30% water change. unlikely, what do you guys think?
I live in an area with very hard water, I'm sure the guy in the shop performed a water hardness test and then claimed it to be the results of the pH test, as they both result in a scary bright purple color at the top of the scale.

What do u think, did they trick me?

I will keep a close eye on all my levels for the next month and see what the proper test kit shows.

 

[waterdrop]

Its anybody's guess what the shop guy might have done. Looking back in the thread now I see you've already made plans to get a liquid test kit. That's good, it will hopefully help clear up some things and it can help reinforce the learning of a number of basic tank things.

~~waterdrop~~