effect of ph on fish

[reefkeeper78]

I have a 120 with basement sump for a total of about 180g. I have around 130lb live a rock and a 2-3inch sand bed. The tank was upgraded from a 75g that was running for 2 years. The 120 is now 6 months old. my ph ranges from 7.8-.8.0 and drops to 7.7-7.6 at night. I have posted numerous times about low ph and read till my eyes hurt about low ph. Bottom line is my corals seem to have decent color and the 2 chormis, 1 damsel, 1 firefish, and 1 yellow wrasse all seem to weather the ph swings I have. My problem is I want about 15-20 fish but it seems every time I introduce more, they last a few weeks and die. My last ones were bangai cardinals and another chromis. All were dead within a month. I did drip aclimation and fed flakes, and mysis. All were eating but I found no reason for them to die. I thourghly confused. I really would like to get a tang, either kole or yellow and a mandrin as well as the bangai's. I have a few crustations too, two pep. shrimp, a sally light foot and a serpent star. Everything thrives but new fish? I've tested my water, and except for ph every paraminter is normal. I've kept my salinity at 1.024 and have an ato so it doesn't fluctate and temp is 77-78 and doesnt' go outside of that.

What am I missing?

 

[SushiGirl]

Not sure what your drip acclimation consists of, but maybe you're acclimating too long. You usually need to get fish out of the bag within 30 minutes of opening it. Sk8r has a really good write up on this if you search her posts.

 

[Recty]

Is there any reason you arent slowly raising the pH in the tank until it's in the normally accepted range of 8.1 to 8.3?

 

[Prozium]

get some PH buffer and raise that PH...slowly.

low-ish PH isn't bad for most fish, but some fish do not have scales (like the bird wrasse) and a low PH will raise the acidic level and it starts to burn them.

 

[agreeive?fish]

I seem to remember reading that some of the more delicate tangs like powder blues don,t fair well if the ph drops below 8.1

now don't old me to that as my memory isn't what it used to be

 

[reefkeeper78]

I've tried just about everything that I can think of to raise my ph: I have put the skimmer air line outside, vented my furnace intake to the outside so that the furnace is drawing air from outside and not inside, removed the sock filters so that there is turbulance in the sump for the best possible gas exchange, tried a new top off unit this weekend so I could get kalwasser into my top off water, I've been growing chateo (its the size of a basketball), I'm growing mangroves, I've turned the ca reactor off at the begining of the week, I can't get rid of the four kids so I made a canopy for the display tank so as to have more gas exchange in the sump thats in the basement and have less chance of having a larger gas exchange in the living room where the kids are, and I tried taking the chaeto out of the sump today to see if that would help but that didn't either, I've checked my ph probes calibration and also checked it against my daughters science kit (don't laugh to much, I'm grasping at straws here) it read the same that the probe and my ph liquid test did. I'm running out of ideas here! short of driving the alkalinity to ranges that aren't prefered, I'm guessing it would be around
15ish.

As far as my aclimation process, the store is 10mins from here the fish don't get dropped in her tank. They're delivered to her store around 4ish and I pick them up by 5:30 and they're in my tank by 6:30 after aclimation. I do the drip aclimation for about 40mins give or take a couple mins. I then turn the lights out in the tank for 24 hours and keep the shades drawn to keep the room as dark as possible. I normally feed only once a day but when I introduce a new fish, I feed twice a day for about a week to make sure that they're eating. I know that the fish are in the bag for awhile but people buy fish on the internet and have them delivered all the time. There shouln't be that much difference, at least not in my head.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, tell me please. At this point I have a a couple grand in the setup. I really want to see something inside my tank besides 5 fish and some rocks with corals on it but at this point I'm at my wits end:hammer:

 

[Recty]

Well, something as simple as baking soda can raise pH. I use it when I do hyposalinity on my display. Just if you do decide to dose, do it slowly.

How often do you do water changes?

Make up a batch of new water like you normally would, let it circulate in your mixing container a day and then test the pH. It should be around 8.2 or 8.3. If it's not, maybe something is wrong with your batch of salt. Or your initial water is really low pH and the salt mix isnt able to bring it up. Are you using RO/DI water or tap water?

I would suspect if you can get your fresh mix saltwater up to pH 8.3 and start doing some good sized water changes, then maintain a good water change regimen, you can keep your pH in your display higher.

Also, try turning your sump lighting on at opposite hours of your main tank. The chaeto should help keep the pH higher, so during the night you keep the sump going strong and that might help stop any kind of pH swing.

For what it's worth, on my sump, I keep the lighting on about 18-20 hours a day, I have it turn off around 9:00am and turn back on at 3:00pm and it's on all night. That helps stabilize pH swings, although it wont really help to raise an already low pH.

If you want to spend more money... a ozone machine (which I dont really recommend around kids) or a ultraviolet sterilizer will help raise pH also, plus it will oxygenate the water, which could definitely help with having more fish in the tank.

Have you ever done an oxygen test in your house? Is it closed up real tight during the winter months? With 4 kids and yourself and I assume your wife, and a closed up house, your CO2 levels could just be high which will effect your tanks pH. Maybe try keeping windows open near the tank for a couple days and see if your pH rises a couple points.

All just suggestions, but I think most of them would help at least a little bit.

 

[reefkeeper78]

Recty have you ever been so deep in the forest that you couldn't see the tree's? I have beaten my head into the wall over this, I've tested everything I could think, adjusted, tweeked and modified everything I could think. But I have to admit I never thought I checking ph of the ro/di water or mixed saltwater before doing water changes. I work on cars for a living. More often than not its the simplest of answers that fix the problem. I'm going to check the my water supply and also my fresh mixed saltwater and report back.

As far water changes, I do them once a week, about 16 gallons give or take. As far as the window goes my wife will kill me if I open it during the winter. I live in vermont and this past winter has been more normal than that of the last two or three. Meaning that the outside temp has been around 10 on average and below zero at night. Thankfully its almost spring and we can open the windows more without freezing or running our heating bill out of sight. It also means that the kids can finally get outside!

As far as the oxygen test, I have done an aeration test of tank water inside for an hour and outside for an hour. Both readings were very close to the same, 0.03 apart. Can you explain to me how a uv light will raise the ph of the water or an ozone machine raises the ph? As for my fuge light, I have left it on for 24 hours before, a week or so at a time, it made a small difference but not a huge one. Though the chateo grows like mad....

 

[reefkeeper78]

what should my ro/di water measure for ph on average?

 

[Recty]

what should my ro/di water measure for ph on average?

To be honest, I've never used RO/DI. My tap water here in Alaska is pretty good, I had a 75g reef with softies and SPS and they all did fine on tap water, so I'm not sure. I know people who use RO/DI typically dont just mix in salt mix and call it good, they add other buffers. At least I THINK they do that. pH will drop and swing like crazy if your hardness is down, and if you're just adding salt and no other buffers, I bet, but again I'm just guessing, that maybe your hardness is down and your pH is suffering?

Recty have you ever been so deep in the forest that you couldn't see the tree's? I have beaten my head into the wall over this, I've tested everything I could think, adjusted, tweeked and modified everything I could think. But I have to admit I never thought I checking ph of the ro/di water or mixed saltwater before doing water changes. I work on cars for a living. More often than not its the simplest of answers that fix the problem. I'm going to check the my water supply and also my fresh mixed saltwater and report back.

As far as the oxygen test, I have done an aeration test of tank water inside for an hour and outside for an hour. Both readings were very close to the same, 0.03 apart. Can you explain to me how a uv light will raise the ph of the water or an ozone machine raises the ph? As for my fuge light, I have left it on for 24 hours before, a week or so at a time, it made a small difference but not a huge one. Though the chateo grows like mad....

Yes, I understand your feeling about being so deep in the forest. That's why forums are nice, it helps to get someone else's opinion on things who hasnt been involved in your setup.

Ozone machines basically, as I understand it, inject 03 into your water. Ozone. One oxygen atom breaks off the molecule and the electron that is lost "fries" a piece of organic matter, to put it simply. The result is an oxygen molecule, O2, and a free O, which then binds with another free O. So you get oxygen, in the end, and much cleaner water from the "frying" process.

I've had experience with that, my 210g tank was heavily overstocked, my water was dirty and my pH was hard to maintain. I added an ozone machine and within 12 hours, my water was crystal clear and within a matter of days my pH was up at 8.3 and sometimes 8.4. It was a pretty direct result.

UV sterilizers I have no experience with, but I hear they work on the same principal. It ends up adding extra oxygen to the water in the sterilizing process, although it isnt directly injecting it like an ozone machine does. There is a chemical process that goes on when the UV is breaking everything inside the sterilizer down that the end result is O2 molecules. However, not as rapidly as an ozone machine would. That's nice, because ozone is toxic to all things, it breaks down plastic even. I think a UV sterilizer is a lot safer to use, but probably not as effective as ozone. It's worth reading up on, I learned a lot about the subject from wetwebmedia.

I noticed with mine, I ran carbon after my skimmer which is where I injected the ozone and if I didnt change the carbon monthly, I'd get a headache when I would stick my head down in side my stand near my sump. A little excess ozone was getting by the used carbon and sure enough, it's almost an instant headache. I wouldnt really want that around kids, but you could do it if you're safe enough about it. Up to you. The other choice is just dont inject much ozone.

The awesome thing about either UV or ozone is it has other effects besides higher O2 content. It can help raise pH, it definitely helps kill parasites although it wont erradicate all, and it makes the water crystal clear.

 

[reefkeeper78]

the ozone and uv sterilizer makes sense now. I have a controler on my tank, might be easy enough to regulate with that and make it a little safer in the end. as for my water, ro/di is 7.85ph that is straight from the filter tap without being at room temp. I don't know if there is an effect from higher or lower temps on ph. I'm mixing salt now and will do a full test of alk, ph, ca, and others so that I know what I'm putting into my tank. now that you have put the notion into my head, seems kind of silly that I never thought enough to know what I was changing the water with. I've been to two different lfs and nobody every made mention of anything other than add salt to corect salinity and temp then change the water.

 

[Recty]

Yeah, it's funny how something obvious can be not obvious to one person and painfully obvious to another.

That's what forums are for though

 

[reefkeeper78]

so I have some new results: with my ro/di water and red coral pro salt, 1.024 temp around 70ish I have an alk of 10 with a ph of 8.0. With my ro/di water and instant ocean salt, 1.024 with a temp around 70ish I have an alk reading of 10 and a ph of 8.0. My local fish store mixed instant ocean salt in her ro/di water and had a ph reading of 8.3. The insant ocean salt I had was hers, she let me take some home to try so that I could have a salt from the same batch and have a good comparison. I've posted in the chemistry forum to try to get an answer of how to correct this problem and if it will cause the problem I'm having. I can't see how it won't....

 

[paul_111]

The pH of your RO/DI could be as low as 4 -- it will decrease as the water picks up CO2.

Have you tried kalkwasser? It will raise your pH and add calcium.

Paul