Emergency Need Help!

Emergency! I need help my pH from tap water is 7.2 And my pH in my aquarium is 7.8 For cichlids..

and if I add 7.2 ph to my 7.8 will that affect my ph? I don't want to use chemical buffers! just need to know!

 

Do you have products in your aquarium that affect the pH? Sea shells, crushed coral, or a pH altering substrate? If not, then the true pH of your tap water may be different than you expect. pH is often different when it comes out of the tap as compared to letting it sit out for a while. Usually I recommend taking a sample of tap water and leave it uncovered with an airstone running in it for 24 to 48 hours. This helps to remove any gasses in the water that alter the pH. Once it has had a chance to degas you will be able to determine the true pH. It may be closer to your tank water than you realize, or it may not. It's good to know though, and may help to alleviate any fears you may have.

If you are using a special substrate or something that does raise the pH in your tank, then if you do 1 or 2 weekly water changes of about 30% and slowly refill the tank, your overall pH change won't be too bad, and your fish should accept it quite well.

 

I Have Lava rock and 2 limestones in my aquarium so I do have some buffers..

 

Adjusting Ph can be a very tricky process and normally ends up making a tank very unstable so I never recommend beginners to even try it because it normally ends up costing them all their fish. It is always safer to get fish that can adjust to the Ph of your normal water but I know this limits us on what fish we can keep and most of us just aren’t satisfied with the choices we are given.

Ph is a measurement of the amount of alkaline or acids dissolved in the water. This is easier to control by controlling the hardness of the water by what natural products we place into our tanks. Rocks, sea shells, crushed coral, substrate and drift woods are what effect this so adding and removing them is the safest and most stable way to adjust Ph.

I would advise to adjust it over a long period of time and not try to adjust it over a day or two. Quick adjustments only cause tanks to become unstable and then crash. Also adjusting the Ph with new fish or fry in the tank is always a bad idea because they normally don’t take the stress very well.

And looking at your other posts you are having combined problems with new fish and stressed fish. I would personally recommend you work on solving the stress issues due to new fish not eating and being harassed before attempting to adjust the Ph.

 

If you are using a special substrate or something that does raise the pH in your tank, then if you do 1 or 2 weekly water changes of about 30% and slowly refill the tank, your overall pH change won't be too bad, and your fish should accept it quite well.

I agree, just split the water changes up so that the effect on the pH smaller.

 

Bowcrazy, you're absolutely right. In this case though, I believe the OP already has a higher pH in his tank than his water source due to some of the contents in his tank and he is concerned with doing his water changes (which of course he must do) because of the differences already in the pH between the two. I may be misunderstanding him myself though, so we'll see.

In your case gator, if I am understanding you correctly, I would never recommend large water changes such a changing out 50%. Instead, doing a couple of smaller water changes per week of say 20% (if it was a 30G tank you'd only change out 6G twice a week) and then refilling the tank slowly. This will help prevent the pH from dropping too drastically. It's how I would go about doing it.

Alternately, you could setup a holding tank big enough to do larger weekly water changes with, and put some lava rock and limestone in it so that it has the opportunity to adjust the pH through out the week ready for your next water change.

This wouldn't be overly cheap to do though because you would need a tank, a filter and a heater in the holding tank, as well as a pump to transfer the water from the holding tank to the aquarium.

 

so do small waterchanges?

 

Yes.

 

I was gonna say adjust the fish to the lower Ph but because of the possible tank additives affecting it, it probably won't work. I agree with smaller more constant water changes.