Maintaing ph in hypo treatment

[viggen]

Dealing with another ich outbreak. Due to my number of fish and cold weather outside I have no choice but to hypo the entire tank vs throwing all the fish in qt.

I have slowly dropped the salinity over about a week, waiting on a new Milwaukee salinity meter to arrive before I take it in the .008-9 range, according to my refractometer I am at 1.009-1.0010 .....

I just checked the ph and ammonia with the ammonia between 0-.25 and ph looks to be at 7.8 ish..... I know I need to start raising it up but how do I do this? I have read people use just plain baking soda? Should I get one of those kent dropper things and mix baking soda with water?

Or is there something else I should do? How do I determine how much I should use? Tank is a 475g fowlr, all crabs, anemones etc have been removed and put in their own tank.

 

[b0bab0ey]

I just checked the ph and ammonia with the ammonia between 0-.25 and ph looks to be at 7.8 ish..... I know I need to start raising it up but how do I do this? I have read people use just plain baking soda? Should I get one of those kent dropper things and mix baking soda with water?

You do realize that you have to "bake" the baking soda to get a raise in pH?

These threads explain better than I can:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1520213&highlight=ph+baking+soda

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1477209&highlight=ph+baking+soda

 

[george915]

I wouldn't worry about PH during hypo. Lower PH also has some other side benefits...

 

[b0bab0ey]

I wouldn't worry about PH during hypo. Lower PH also has some other side benefits...

While I doubt the OP will encounter any significant problems unless the pH drops below, say, 7.5ish; I'm not aware of any benefits either. Please elaborate.

 

[snake42490]

This is what I did if you have hard water. I used tap water instead of RO/DI water. My tap water here is very hard and even in low salinity it does a good job staying constant. While when I used RO/DI water I had a little bit of swing in PH. If you do use tap water make sure to use Prime or some de chlorinator. Also say if your ph of your tap water is only 7.5 or so. If you boil the water and have any hard metals in the water it will react and bump the ph over 8. I know it's a pain to boil water, but in doing this it will keep the water steady and you won't have any ph swings. The other option is using baking soda, which for me is the last thing I want to do! I will let someone else chime in on using that!