A ph of 7.4, is that dangerous?

[saltwater84]

Ok guys,I have setup a new tank for about three days now, and the water is starting to clear up. i check my tank and it has a ph of 7.4, is that dangerous for both fish and reef? I know that a reef tank needs at least a ph of 8.2-8.4 to thrive. Also, I am planing to fuse my two current setups, one 20gals, and one 5gals to my new 46gal tank and I am planing to use both the old water from both of those two tanks, would that incease my ph? Or should I go ahead and use the buffer and then add the old water, lr, and sand?

right now my tank is half filled with new water and new live sand.

 

[Joe Fish]

Yes, that is bad. Do you have any buffer in the tank? I would raise it very very very slowly over days with a buffer. The old stuff might just do the trick though.

 

[YahooFishKeeper]

if there is nothing in it, you dont have to raise it slowly. you need to figure out why its so low.

 

[saltwater84]

I use clean dechloride drinking water and that is about it. Should I just use buffer or put my old water, lr, and sand in? What should I do? I really don't know why the ph is so low.

 

[YahooFishKeeper]

do you have aragonite in the tank that you are having the problem with? also, whats your salinity? do you have live rock in there?

 

[saltwater84]

Yes, the sand I put in there is aragonite, I figure out that the sand from my 20 and 5 gals tanks combine together would not be enough so I bought a 20pounds bag of live aragonite sand from my lps. Today, I just place a piece of lr in the tank, I haven't add any of the live sand from my 20 and 5 gals tanks in there yet. I was hoping to do that after I test the ph. Anyways, I went and bought a bottle of kent marine ph buffer. Should I put it in or wait until I add the old water and sand in there?

my saltnity is at 1.022

And Yahoofishkeeper, is there such a specie of clownfish like the ones in the pic under your name? Those clownfish are nice.

 

[YahooFishKeeper]

LOL.... thats a photoshopped picture of a rhino and a clown merged together.

 

[saltwater84]

I guess that when graphic artist get bore.
anyways, I still wish that there is such as specie like that. Maybe if we keep dumping nuclear waste into the ocean.

 

[TheFool]

A pH of 7.4 is very bad. What numbers do you have for alkalinity? It is very hard to believe you can have a pH that low with alk anything near normal. It is possible, usual for pH to drop to 7.8 with a normal alk , especially in fully closed, centrally heated modern houses with heavy bioloads, but even that is 'on the edge'.
Normally I would say that aragonite or calcite would be nonissues in maintaining pH, but at numbers that low they actualy start to become usefully soluble, but relying on them is no way to carry on. Tes that alk (and prosper)!

Merry jule!

 

[saltwater84]

I have never seen a ph this low before as well. I have no kit to test the alkalanity of the water, but I will have my local lfs test it for me tomorrow. I just recently pour 10ml of kent marine ph increaser into my tank, it boosted up my ph level to 7.8 now, but I'm sure it mess up my alkalanity because I didn't use anything with the ph increaser. I still new to these things. Maybe the issue came from the drinking water I used.

 

[Lorna]

If you just started this up and mixed your saltwater.....what type of salt mix did you use? did you check the ph of the mixed water as it should be buffered to 8.2 ...... you should always check your water parameters on your salt water mix when ever you buy a new bucket of salt.....just a saftey precaution........maybe you got a bad batch of salt.....

 

[saltwater84]

The salt mix is called instant ocean.

 

[Joe Fish]

IO is a good salt, I used it for a while. Like Lorna said, you might have received a bad bucket of salt. Mix up some water with that salt and test it.

 

[saltwater84]

I did, reading is still 7.4. So what should I do, discard the water and buy another bag and then mix it up again or what?? right now ph is currently at 7.8-8.0 because I use kent marine ph increaser, but like I said, maybe my alkalanity is mess up because I did not put any buffer with it.

 

[Joe Fish]

What does your water test to? You using tap water or RO? What test kit are you using?

 

[TheFool]

Buy an alk test kit. It's a pretty important thing to monitor.

 

[Limi310]

Personally....I would buy another Ph test kit just to double check the readings

 

[saltwater84]

The water I use is RO, the test kit I use is from aquarium pharmaceuticals, inc. By adding buffer to my tank each day, I still can't reach a ph of 8.2. I don't know what wrong.. I am thinking about getting a new test kit, but what kind, I think these are what my lps carry only.

 

[Dadstank]

The culprit is probably the water you are starting off with.
My tap water is very hard out of the tap and is REALLY high in calcium...it is great for african cichlids(FW) but the higher calcium is bad for SW (RODI to the rescue)
I would try treating the RODI water before adding to the tank for waterchanges n such.
Cheapest way to test is to have your LFS test for ya*laughingc *crazysmil

 

[TheFool]

It's a waste of time getting the lfs to test for you as alk is one of the things you'll need to test regularly, so you as may as well get the kit and get on with it.
i agree that it is possible that if you have tap rich in calcium that's not calcium carb then you might get some damage to your alk to drive down pH but 1. that's a really rare set of circumstances, and I mean really rare, 2. he's on RO anyway that should pull most of it out, and 3. the fix is to buffer alk anyway.
So get the test kit. My bet is RO + new tank (always hammers alk as lots organic acids at this early stage) = low alk (and many salts aren't that high to start with.

Don't overlook the obvious. Without numbers for alk I would strongly suspect you're coming up with tricky answers for easy q's.