Slightly Urgent ??

[FishGeek]

I do my water changes on Saturdays and I test my tanks about 1 every other week. All the tanks are beautiful except my Tropical Tank. The pH and KH are low. (KH: 0 ppm and pH:about 6.2) Normal is: KH: 130 ppm; pH: 7. What is the best way to correct this?

 

[SANND]

All three tanks are that low?

 

[Masta_Cheef]

...except my Tropical Tank

All BUT the tropical tank are fine..

 

[SANND]

Oh, sorry! Wasn't paying attention...

Have you added anything new to your tanks? Drift wood, peat,shells...? I would do small water changes because you don't want to change the pH too quickly. You need to figure out what's lowering it before you can fix the problem tho.

 

[FishGeek]

I have not added anything new but I was planning on adding a new peice of drift wood that is why I tested to make sure if I added it I waould get myself into danger. The funny thing is that the Cichlid tank just got new driftwood and it is perfect. (And no I didnt mix the tests up, I put them on the top of the tank when I do it.)

 

[SANND]

That's really weird. :s Like I said, my advice is to do several small water changes and see if that fixes the problem. There are products on the market (pH up/down) you can use if the water changes don' t work.

 

[Exevious]

I assuming you did a re-test?

Sometimes you can run across a bum strip.

 

[FishGeek]

I did do a retest and the results were repeated.

 

[FroggyFox]

hmm yeah its hard to figure something like this out...something in the tank has to be causing it if all your other tanks have different results from this one tank.

Do you do the same schedule/type of water changes on all of your tanks (incl the tropical one)?

 

[FishGeek]

Yep. That way I would know if I have a problem (at least I thought). lol. Should I wait another day and do a water change again and then test again before I put the driftwood in?

 

[FroggyFox]

I think I"d 2nd sannd's suggestion of a few smaller water changes to try and bring the pH back up. before you do a full water change of like 50%? You could also run some tests with your tap water pH and maybe just take another look at your tanks and see what is different about THIS tank.

 

[FishGeek]

I only do 25% water changes once a week. Do I need to do more to fix this. (Just want to make sure that I got it.)

 

[SANND]

If it were me, I'd do smaller water changes, like 10%?, every day and see if the pH starts to raise back up.

 

[Fish Friend]

once pH gets down o its 5.0's its hard to get back up again... so keep on adding pH up on a daily basis twice a day

 

[SANND]

once pH gets down o its 5.0's its hard to get back up again... so keep on adding pH up on a daily basis twice a day

I would only use pH up as a last resort. My only experience with it was not good and I caused even more chaos. Water changes can fix most problems so I always try that first.