planted discus

[Qbal18]

i have a hevily planted tank that i have disus in i recently got a presserized co2 systom after doing diy for 6 months and now my ph has droped to 6.4- ( cant tell my ph test kit gets hard to tell bello 6.4 it is all yellow). i am blessed with extremly soft city water great for discus but with a kh of 20ppm and a ph of 6.8-7 with co2 it drops fast. is it ok to ad a bit of bakeing soda or something to raise the kh a tiny bit to make the ph more like 6.4 so i can see what it is or is 5.8-6.0 ok for discus rams cardanols and rummy nose?
when i was going diy it was staying at a ph 6.4-6.6 but it was not that much co2

[ChloroPhil]

YES! Adding enough Baking Soda to get your KH to 3 or 4 degrees (I don't know how that converts to ppm) will help your stability a lot. With your water I'd put enough in to bring the KH to 3 degrees to make it easier to maintain a lower pH, 6.4-6.6

[Debbie]

Adding a little crushed coral to the filter would also work. My tap water is also very soft with KH and GH of 2 degrees. My pH in one tank kept crashing down to 5 and the fish were getting stressed (this was before I had discus in this tank they were live bearers) so I added a handful of crushed coral in a panty hose foot to the filter. The water remains acidic but at 6.5. The livebearers didn't make it, but the discus do well.

[chavez720]

QBal I would suggest that you add a bit of Baking Soda to your water

20 ppm = 1.1° kH (17.9 ppm = 1° kH)

I ran a tank with pressurized CO2 just like you are doing. Nearly killed every fish in the tank!!!! Was running a HOB filter and it stuck overnight and the flow was 0. It sent the pH crashing down and the CO2 content in the water to almost a lethal level.

Now I raise the kH to 4° with baking soda and only get a ± 0.1 pH unit difference night to day. Usually I would get wild swings in pH (± 0.5 units). The fish are much happier with a more consistent pH. The filter has even stopped a few times since (In fact this weekend) and they are remained OK. The thing that saved them was the kH was high enough to counter act the sudden spike in CO2.

[ddaquaria]

I agree with Debbie. I have had problems with plants when adding baking soda. Some of my plants tend to do some strange things with all of the salt (ie java fern turning black)