henry_k@apollo.uucp (Keith E. Henry) (03/11/88)
IF YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT MY pH QUESTION, READ NO FURTHER. A have a community 10 gal. fresh water tank with approximately 10 small fish. I have gravel, a rock (aquarium store variety), plastic aquarium plants, and an outside Aqua Junior (or something) filter with Ammo-carb in it. I do a 20% water change every week. Things are working pretty well. However, even though the water I add tends to have low pH, by week end the pH is high. I need to add chemicals every mid week to keep it around 7.0. My question is: Could some knowledgable person out there give me and/or the NET the basics about why pH changes and what it means? Is it natural for it to edge higher, or is something wrong? Is there something about the set-up that should be changed? Thanks. /keh
Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu (Ashwin Ram) (03/12/88)
I don't know the answer to your question, but if it's any consolation my pH also
did the same thing when my tank was new (I had pretty much the same setup as
yours). After a couple of months the tendency of the pH to rise disappeared.
Actually now my pH tends to drop (because fish waste is acidic), but doing water
changes takes care of that. I am very reluctant to add any chemicals if I can
help it.
I did notice that adding water conditioners like Amquel or Start Right tends to
increase the pH over time (if you leave a bucket of new tap water with Start
Right in it, the pH steadily rises by upto .5 or more over 2-3 days). I don't
know why this should happen. Any clues? I think if you add a chloramine
neutralizer to water which doesn't have chloramine, or chlorine neutralizer to
water which doesn't have chlorine (e.g., water that has already sat out for a
while), the pH will rise because these chemicals are reducing agents. Again, I
am very reluctant to add chemicals that neutralize something I don't have in the
first place.
I would strongly recommend you get real plants instead of plastic ones. I
too started with plastic ones and slowly I replaced all of them. Fish love
real plants -- they hide in them, they nibble them, and so on. In addition,
plants help the natural ecological balance of your tank a lot. They absorb
nitrates and other fish crud and carbon dioxide, and give off oxygen. Read a
book (e.g., Ines Scheurmann) on various kinds of plants and which are good
ones for your setup.
I'm also posting this to alt.aquaria in case someone knows the answer to my
water-in-a-bucket question.
-- Ashwin.
ARPA: Ram-Ashwin@cs.yale.edu
UUCP: {decvax,ucbvax,harvard,cmcl2,...}!yale!Ram-Ashwin
BITNET: Ram@yalecs