Re: ph problems

["Susanne and Cory Williamson" <webwill@infinet.net>]

>for my water changes.  My carbonate
>and general hardness measure in the
>"very soft" range using the Tetra
>hardness test kit.


I am not familiar with the ranges in concentration for this test kit- what
are your hardness values in ppm or german hardness?


>Last week I bought some Seachem Acid and
>Alkaline buffers.  I mixed them in the
>proper ratio to buffer the PH at 6.5 with

>>>Snip
>The ph went down to about 6.5 and then
>within twelve hours was back at 7.2.  I
>did not expect the bounce back in a buffered
>environment.
>>Snip
>  The ph went down to 6.5 thing
>bounced back to 7.2 overnight.  I don't
>want to experiment with this anymore because
>the ph bounce is hard on the fish.


Your water must still be buffered by "something"

>>"rainbow" slate

The slate may not be slate at all- it may be a type of marble --You might
want to check this one out further. How strong was the sulpheric- I has been
a while since I took geology 101 but I think that it has to be very
concentrated acid to work on hard limestones.

>The other day I got some roots to put in the
>tank but have not done so yet.  I hope these
>will acidify the tank but given my observations
>so far I am not so sure.


As long as your water is not buffered too strongly, you should be able to
acidify your water with roots and peat.
>Before I sign off I should say that I have had
>this tank for about a year and I have tried a
>number of times to lower the ph using just acid
>and had experience no sucess.  I saw the buffer
>as a silver bullet.

Your right about this one- by adding acid ( especially strong acids) to your
water you will simply reduce the buffering capacity of your water- hence you
will reduce inherant stability of your pH- not a great idea (local fish
stores love to sell acids/ bases and other stuff that willnot  work and that
you don't need)- buffers (of some sort) are the best way to go to keep
stability.  After a couple of years of trial and error, I have settled on
using Baking soda and CO2 as the most stable buffering system. By adjusting
the carbonate concentration to 3 degrees german hardness(using Baking Soda)
and injecting CO2, I can keep my pH at 6.4 until my CO2 runs out (every
couple of weeks when you rely on the lowly yeast-sugar method). This method
has been by far the simplest and cheapest I have tried. If you want to
adjust pH up or down, just increase or decrease the baking soda added at
water changes

Cory Williamson


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