where is my buffering coming from?

[gingee]

Hi All,
I have finally got round to installig my tank. For the substrate I have Eco-complete topped off with aquarium gravel. I have a 50W undergravel heater and an Eheim 2128 with Thermofilter. I am using the standard creamic macaroni looking stuff and "substrat".

RO water at 10-20 ppm TDS is being prepared which has PH of 6.5.

So I got all of this together and then put some Electro Right into the tank (normally I would do this in the prep tank but as it was the first lot of water I didn't think that it would matter that much. I also put some liquid fert in the tank.

My PH before treatment was ~6.75 but then strated rising over a 24 hour to 7.6!

I went out and bought a carbonate hardness test kit and it was showing 3-4dH.

I also have pressurised co2 being introduced into in the tank via a PH controller.

So I am thinking, something is making the PH rise eyt the KH don't look too bad. General Hardness in the tank was ~100 ppm.

If I do a 20% water change the PH comes down at first (as you would expect from diluting PH7.6 with PH6.5) then slowly creepas back up.

Candidates for raising the PH are:
Electro Right
Liquid Fert
Gravel (highly unlikely)Eco-complete.

AFAIK none of the products should have any buffering properties.

Any ideas?

Ginge

[Marinemom]

My guess is it probably is the electro right. Why do you want to add this anyway? A stable PH is way more important.

Diane

[poconogal]

Hi All,
I have finally got round to installig my tank. For the substrate I have Eco-complete topped off with aquarium gravel. I have a 50W undergravel heater and an Eheim 2128 with Thermofilter. I am using the standard creamic macaroni looking stuff and "substrat".

RO water at 10-20 ppm TDS is being prepared which has PH of 6.5.

So I got all of this together and then put some Electro Right into the tank (normally I would do this in the prep tank but as it was the first lot of water I didn't think that it would matter that much. I also put some liquid fert in the tank.

My PH before treatment was ~6.75 but then strated rising over a 24 hour to 7.6!

I went out and bought a carbonate hardness test kit and it was showing 3-4dH.

I also have pressurised co2 being introduced into in the tank via a PH controller.

So I am thinking, something is making the PH rise eyt the KH don't look too bad. General Hardness in the tank was ~100 ppm.

If I do a 20% water change the PH comes down at first (as you would expect from diluting PH7.6 with PH6.5) then slowly creepas back up.

Candidates for raising the PH are:
Electro Right
Liquid Fert
Gravel (highly unlikely)Eco-complete.

AFAIK none of the products should have any buffering properties.

Any ideas?

Ginge
I had the same weird water. I'm on a private well. Several months ago, out of the tap - PH 8.2, KH 5 dkh, GH 7 dgh. Within 24 hours, PH 8.9. Never figured out what was buffering the water, I just know what was not buffering it. Some people suggested perhaps magnesium instead of calcium, which is of course why KH/GH test kit reads low, it doesn't read magnesium. About 2 months ago, PH from tap dropped back to 7.8, KH 5 dkh, GH 5 dgh. I used to age tap water and filter it thru peat to reduce PH, and also had exact same amount of peat in my tank's filters to keep the PH down and stable after a WC, because the peat filtered water still had the PH shooting up in the tank after a WC until I added peat to the filter. Now I just use tap, PH is staying stable, no peat in filters. Beats me! I still test before every single WC, though, in case somethings changed yet again with my well.

Connie

[poconogal]

My guess is it probably is the electro right. Why do you want to add this anyway? A stable PH is way more important.

Diane
Hi Diane, she's using RO water, so it needs the Electro Right, to reconstitute the water with proper minerals. RO is too pure to use without it, it won't sustain life. DI water and distilled water are also too pure.

Connie

[April]

i dont know much about ro water..but i do know some people just add a bit of tap to add back a few minerals.
there are some people who keep their discus at ph 8 on the forum...alls stable..
unless you want to breed...then youd have to drop it.

[poconogal]

i dont know much about ro water..but i do know some people just add a bit of tap to add back a few minerals.
there are some people who keep their discus at ph 8 on the forum...alls stable..
unless you want to breed...then youd have to drop it.
That's true, April. They do use tap added back too, I didn't like Electro Right so I used to do that with DI water. Just have to play with the amounts. Since I'm now on straight tap, I've let my PH rise back up to 7.7 and the Discus are fine with it. The breeder I bought my discus from actually has them spawning in 7.4 - 7.6, which surprised me.

Connie

[Graham]

That wasn't hard to figure out,,,Eco complete, the gravel and some buffering chemistry...what's the gravel made of...100% silca or one of the Hagen like gravels that had calcium carbonate in it? Then throw in the Electro and it's trace elements...7.6 is really doable.

Buffering chemistry is neat and soemtimes it doesn't take much to buffer thing up. If you go to KoiVet, in the best of fourm there is a thread there on how calcium etc can buffer water

G

You've got a KH of 70ppm that by itself would get ther pH above 7.0

http://www.mops.ca/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/skus/pf/PFCS-00770.asp?E+scstore

[poconogal]

That wasn't hard to figure out,,,Eco complete, the gravel and some buffering chemistry...what's the gravel made of...100% silca or one of the Hagen like gravels that had calcium carbonate in it? Then throw in the Electro and it's trace elements...7.6 is really doable.

Buffering chemistry is neat and soemtimes it doesn't take much to buffer thing up. If you go to KoiVet, in the best of fourm there is a thread there on how calcium etc can buffer water

G

You've got a KH of 70ppm that by itself would get ther pH above 7.0

http://www.mops.ca/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/skus/pf/PFCS-00770.asp?E+scstore
Graham, in my case my tank was at the time empty of all things, except water. It was also an old tank, from 13 years ago. I've also never had gravel affect my water. I've used the same brand gravel since the beginning, and tested water with and without the gravel, no changes. I don't know about Eco Complete, though, never used it.

Connie

[Graham]

Connie some of the new gravel that Hagen and some other are coming out with have been affecting pH/KH. Plain ole #2 sand blasting silica doesn't have any affect at all.

[Alight]

As Graham said, the KH you have in your water should make your pH 7.6 or higher. More likely, it's that something in your water is keeping the pH down when it first comes out of the RO unit. My RO unit does not remove CO2, and it produces 6.4 water that goes to 8.0 after aging and aeration for 24 hours as the CO2 blows off. My RO water has less than 10 ppm solutes in it. It takes very little CO2 to bring the pH down in water this soft. Also takes very little calcium to take the pH to 8 once the CO2 is blown off.

If you have injected CO2, with the KH of 3, you should easily be able to bring the pH in your tank down to 6.4 - 6.6 which would give you CO2 of between 25 and 40 ppm in your tank, which is what you should be aiming for in a planted tank.

So, I'm guessing that if you age and aerate your change water, the pH will be the same as your tank water without the added CO2. I wouldn't do anything except have your CO2 unit bring the pH down to around 6.6 - 6.8 in your tank.

On the other hand, if you are planning to raise Discus Juvies to adults, I'd scrap the planted tank idea and go with bare bottom. Your asking for much work and/or trouble if you try to rasie Juvies in a planted tank.

[poconogal]

Connie some of the new gravel that Hagen and some other are coming out with have been affecting pH/KH. Plain ole #2 sand blasting silica doesn't have any affect at all.
I've been using good old Estes brand, I think it is, gravel for years and years. Inert as far as I can see. I guess Hagen's been coming out with gravels to buffer? Could've used that years ago.

I'm PMing you, so put on your thinking cap. I don't want to be a thread stealer, Ginge. ;)

[Graham]

Estes always was a great gravel.....the new hagen stuff is very pretty but it does have buffers in it


Thinking cap it must be here some were :antlers:

[JONESY]

Connie some of the new gravel that Hagen and some other are coming out with have been affecting pH/KH. Plain ole #2 sand blasting silica doesn't have any affect at all.
this sand is a natural color correct? and where to buy this stuff? how does the sand come how many lbs per bag ,price
thanks

[Graham]

Jonesy. I not sure which product you're refering to but the silca is a natural product,,,,while the Hagen prodcut I'n not sure about. The grain size in all the colours is very uniform and the colours are very consistant...that says to me ..manmade...but I'm not sure

[JONESY]

Jonesy. I not sure which product you're refering to but the silca is a natural product,,,,while the Hagen prodcut I'n not sure about. The grain size in all the colours is very uniform and the colours are very consistant...that says to me ..manmade...but I'm not sure

oh sorry about that i was asking about blasting sand .about the price and color . also where to buy the stuff
thanks
jonesy

[abwalker]

I think the answer has been said. First of all, depending on how much electroright you used, you may be getting a false reading from a pH probe. These tools are terrible inaccurate in low-ionic strength water and are not able to read RO water.

If the readings are legit, then i would look two one of your guesses (leaning toward the gravel) is correct. The RO water has no buffering capacity, so in the carbonate buffered system indecated by your KH test... the pH can easily reach the mid to high 7's.

I think the take home point is what Alight says... this situation is nearly perfect for running a planted tank
(which we are all assuming, since we havn't heard otherwise). You can get a nice pH ranging between 6.4 and 7 and CO2 between 20 and 40ppm.

The thing to watch is whether this condition changes if you change your use of the electroright or ferts, or as the gravel become coated in biofilms.

Abby

[Graham]

oh sorry about that i was asking about blasting sand .about the price and color . also where to buy the stuff
thanks
jonesy

The blasting sand is pure silica and a light tan colour. Around here we can buy it for about $10 for 40Kg.

[gingee]

Hi All,
Thanks for all of your replies and apologies for not acknowledging earlier.

At the same time as getting this set up I have been getting job interviews etc. so life has been a little more than hectic at the moment.

I think the possibility is that it was the electro-right I got a little carried away with.

First, a little word on water consistency.

Only 2 years back I set up an African tank and the PH out of the tap is ~8.0 with hardness levels you would also expect. I have spoken to a discus keeper who gets the same supply and he says that he has noticed a drop iover the last few years to PH7.6. Not dramatic maybe but you would have thought you would get consistency. On the other hand we have had this "drought" for afew years so maybe a lot of the water supply is coming from "standing" water in resevoirs rather than water that has picked up aal of the hardness coming through the chalky chilterns etc.

Of course, like many people, I spent months reading up on here and plantedtank.net, working out the best kit to use etc. and kinda assumed that if money was no object then it would all work fine and I would be posting pics up of lovely plants and fish soon. LOL.

Now an update.

Household water pressure has risen (Thames Water after 3 attempts have finally managed to fix one of those infamous leaks) so RO water production is better at 8-10PPM TDS. I am constantly carrying out water changes (about 25-30% daily) and not adding any additives in an attempt to dilute the electo-right. I actually have some "PH adjuster" too in order to add soem buffering but haven't used this as obviously I must have SOME kind of natural buffering going on but also upon further reading the website it seems to assume I will use PH minus and I really wanted to keep it as natural as possible. The prepared water isn't treated or aerated. At the moment RO water is dumped into a 100 litre plastic househould drinking water tank in the loft overnight and then gravity fed into the tank in the morning.

The cycle I seem to have is:

Water change in the morning brings PH down to ~ 6.75 during the day it creeps up to 7.6. Overnight PH drops to ~7.0 (CO2 is constantly being added and plants releasing CO2). It's a 100 gallon tank with lotsa plants now and 7 corydoras trilineatus. The Corys really couldn't give a damn. They mooch around and feed whatever the weather :)

It's going to be a planted Discus tank and I think I realisticly need to revisit my stocking levels as I am suspicious as to how to keep stability in this environment.

I bought a handheld TDS meter as it seemed the best way I could monitor what is going on. TDS in the main tank is now ~40ppm with KH down to about 1-2dH.

So. I imagine some people might be horrified thinking that I am due an acid crash any moment.

In my opinion, it's a "large" tank. I have pressurised CO2 with a PH controller & solenoid and I just thought that the CO2 would do the trick in bringing the PH down to 6.5 and then leave it at that. I also assumed that I would be more at risk from acid crash with such low KH and TDS but now I am suspicious that I am not putting enough CO2 into the system. The diffuser I purchased (for a LOT of money so don't laugh) is this one.

http://www.aquaessentials.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=77_78_197&products_id=255

Now it says that it's for 40-70 gallon tanks and I have calculated that mine is ~90 gallons but I obviosuly have about 10cms of Eco-complete and gravel int there. It does say that for larger tanks I should have 2 but I assume that's for dispersion. I can't imagine that you generally have more than about 4 bpm to maintain co2 & PH levels so why can't I just have 8bpm out of the one unit? At the moment I am running about 15-20bpm out of the one diffuser but it doesn't seem to be making any difference.

Discus are still going to be a few months away whatever the situation but I don't want to be adding any more fish/load onto the system until I can guarantee stability for my corys.

i'm very conscious that I am only a week into this and it's a big enough deal just cycling in a new tank let alone all of the extra parameters I have added (low PH requirenments, CO2 addition etc.). Mayber I am just beign a little worry monkey and need to up my CO2 addition.

I admit that gravel could be a suspicion but i somehow doubt it but if this continues, I might take some out and stick it in some viakal to see what happens.

Sorry for my ramblings and I'll make sure I'll keep in touch with this thread in future. All of your thought are gratefully received.

(Mr) Ginge :)

[texasdiscusman]

It is your eco-complete that is causing your unstable P.H. if you turn your co2 up to high it will drain the tank of co2. I have the same problem my eco complete. You can use ph down by seachem but do not use discus buffer get the type that has no phosphate's in it or you will have algae mess.

[gingee]

aaargh!! If it's the eco-complete, it's a right pain as I am NOT goping to dismantle the tank and the stuff is too expensive to be throwing away. how would it do this though? The KH is only 1-2 at the moment!

Ginge

[texasdiscusman]

If you read there ads they say nothing about a stable P.H. And now they advertising eco complete for African Ciclids. Next time use Flourite i feel the same way but know real concern it won't hurt the fish.

[gingee]

bugger!

I thought of fluorite but to be honest I had such a brain overload with all of the information I can't remember why I went for eco-complete (possibly to do with lots of faffing about washing the dust out of fluorite :| )

Oh well. it'll be interesting tonight as the PH hasn't gone above 7 all day with the newly raised bubble count so hopefully it won't be too low in the morning.

Little soldiers those Corys are for putting up with my shenanigans!

plants are pearling now :)

Ginge

[gingee]

This link to Eco-complete information actually DOES claim "Nitrate and carbonate free – will not increase pH or carbonate hardness"


http://www.mops.ca/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/skus/pf/PFCS-00770.asp?E+scstore

It seems I was probably beign a bit wusy with bubble counts and I have reamped it right up and now have s reasonably stable PH around 6.5

:)

Ginge