Will Ph Remain High?

[OldMan47]

Please do not write of your need for nitrogen in a cycle Mo. A simple statement may go a long way here. The plants do not care what form their nitrogen takes. Here we go with that in mind. The ammonia will be absorbed as far as possible by plants and ammonia processing bacteria. The more the plants absorb, the less will be left for nitrogen processors.

 

[Mo1959]

Hi OldMan. I don't actually have any live plants in at the moment. I will probably have a mixture of real and artificial. I most certainly don't have green fingers and can kill almost anything!!!!! I have ordered a couple of bits of java fern to attach to my bogwood and will move my moss balls over from my current tank.........at least they seem almost indestructable even for me

I think I have maybe set the cycle back by a few days by the complete changeover but I have gone this far so another few days added on won't make much difference. The ammonia wasn't quite back to zero this morning as it had been previously.

Thanks again for all the good advice.

Maureen

 

[Mo1959]

I am beginning to think I have a water supply that is determined to make my life difficult. I seem to have swung the other way since I ditched the gravel and put in the sand. The ph is now almost off the chart at the low end!!!!! My cycle has now slowed to a crawl
no doubts because of this from what I have read on here. It is obviously still processing slowly as I have just tested for nitrates and have between 40 and 80, hard to read. I have already moved my large piece of bogwood which I really liked and think I will have to remove the smaller bit too which I have unfortunately just tied some java fern to. Guess I am going to have to go for artificial wood if I want it and stick to rocks for natural decoration or maybe even just go all artificial since my water seems to be so easy to alter.

Don't quite understand the chemistry behind it but I take it I must have water that is extremely easy to buffer(is that the word?) and that anything I add is going to alter it very quickly.

My, this hobby is turning out to be a lot more complicated than most people realise

 

[karin]

Just a word of caution here, when I was cycling my tank I had a Ph that fluctuated first really high 8.4 and then really low below 7.0. I added baking soda to increase the Ph for the cycle. But now cycled with fish I'm steady at 8.0 and am enjoying many fish ( I look for tank bred for other reasons) but all is fine.

So swing Ph, I think, is also part of cycling.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, I would like to agree and add to what Karin is saying. While it is good to begin to learn various facts about both your tap water and about the influence that your substrate and other tank decorations will have on that tap water during the period you are cycling, I feel it is a mistake for beginners to go too far with this. It works out better to consider the period of cycling to be a completely separate period and then once the cycle is finished and fish are in there to gather a new impression of your tank chemistry. The stable tank with fish may work out to be more compatible with what you want than the cycling period was having you believe.

One good thing to do is to work on making the observations and notes in your aquarium notebook diary be as clear as possible. It will be very useful to be able to come back and find clear conclusions recorded about your jar tests and other tests you've done during cycling and they will indeed be useful in your future thinking.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Mo1959]

Thanks both. Do you think it might be worth using the baking soda for a few weeks just to at least get through the cycle? I feel if it is going to remain so low it is going to take forever. It is reading at the lowest level the test kit reads and for all I know may be even lower. Once the cycle is over if it were to remain between 6 and 7 I would be quite happy as I want my eventual stocking to be tetras, rasboras and corys which would suit them all.

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, there's nothing wrong with using baking soda during a fishless cycle as most of it will go out with the big water change at the end of the cycle. I would be conservative at first: measure your pH and record it before you start. Then calculate out an amount of baking soda (make sure its simple baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and not baking powder (which sometimes has extra ingredients.)) Calculate your amount using 2 teaspoons per 50L of aquarium water volume. (One teaspoon per 50L will raise KH without raising pH, 3 teaspoons (equals one tablespoon) will raise pH quite a bit.. so 2 teaspoons is middle of the road.) Test your pH afterwards and see how things go. The ideal growing pH for the bacteria is in the range of pH 8.0 to 8.4 but of course it grows pretty well 7.4 through 8.6 or so.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Mo1959]

OK will give it a try. Thanks for all your advice so far. I am sure I will be back for more.