pH just keeps dropping...but WHY?

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Sebastian_Troy

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
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Location
East Sussex
To anyone who may be able to help,

I am new to reef aquaria, I have a 15 Gallon display tank and a 15 gallon sump tank, I have a 70Gal prism skimmer (overkill I know) which I haven't used untill recently due to lack of need. Both tanks have a 3 inch aragonite sand bed, I made my own live rock which I cured for about two years, not because I was patient, but because i've been saving and gearing up to this for that long!

About 4 months ago I put in two pieces of live rock to seed the tank and begin cycling, The tank has cycled and all the parameters have leveled out, Nitrates and ites are near enough 0, however I have started using the skimmer to slow the growth of some seaweed that has taken over my tank!

The problem is the pH, it has settled out at just above 7, I have remedied this by adding reef buffers, raising the alk and adding kalkwasser, but whatever I do it just settles back down to 7.7 ish overnight, I have Mysis shrimp coming out of my ears, a small turbo snail which snuck in on one of the rocks, tons of little tenticles poking out of gaps and small white tubes, a mysterius little mushroom thing has just started growing, thee are worms, little starfish... basically the tank is thrumming with life, when I was permenantly treating the tank i bought 5 turbo snails and 5 red hermits, needless to say when I wasn't here for a week the pH dropped again and I was left with onlt 1 of each :'(
Also the coraline algea will not grow, It started a bit when the pH was good but now its stopped again

Two questions really, how come if reef life is so delicate so much life has survived these low pH's

and please please can someone help me figure this out, and sort out the pH

I have two t5 bulbs, one blue and one white, prism skimmer, good water flow,
7.7ish pH, 14dKH alkalinity, 440ppm Calcium, 0 nitrites, negligible nitrates (after all almost no large life in the tank)
 
How do you have your power heads postioned? Are they turning over the water on the surface? PH can be balanced out by oxygen, so keep your skimmer running because the provides oxygen and point your powerheads towards the surface for oxygen and gas exchange.
 
The surface of the water in my tank is clear, as opposed to having a film of floating stuff, so I assume that means I have a good surface water turnover, also I will leave the skimmer running :) thanks
 
Well I gave my tank a check all over, there aren't any stagnant areas, and the surface is moving well, also the water flowing into the sump has good contact with air before entering the water there, so I don't think that a lack of oxygen is causing such a large shift in pH, i mean it's been as low as 7.4 before
 
Here is an idea do you have any rock out of the tank? Maybe take 2 bukets of water test ph, put a rock in one and nothing in the other and see if its something with your rock maybe.
 
Beat you to that, I have some un cured rock, and i took a cured rock out of my tank, I've tried them in salt and RO water, cured rock in both doesn't change the pH, I replace it with uncured rock and the pH shoots through the roof (way up to nearly 13!) So its not the rock, I'm really confused by the pH, It's my first tank and with my budget I can't afford to just rip it all out and start again, besides I've waited sooooo long for my tank and it's only just coming to fruition!
If nobody knows why its doing this perhaps some tips to try and keep it in check? Also the pH is really stable, surprisingly barely swings around at all...
 
Sebastian_Troy said:
Beat you to that, I have some un cured rock, and i took a cured rock out of my tank, I've tried them in salt and RO water, cured rock in both doesn't change the pH, I replace it with uncured rock and the pH shoots through the roof (way up to nearly 13!) So its not the rock, I'm really confused by the pH, It's my first tank and with my budget I can't afford to just rip it all out and start again, besides I've waited sooooo long for my tank and it's only just coming to fruition!
If nobody knows why its doing this perhaps some tips to try and keep it in check? Also the pH is really stable, surprisingly barely swings around at all...
Click to expand...

You can't have dKH of 14 *and* low pH without some very strange circumstances to cause excess CO2 buildup - extremely unlikely.

Honestly I'd suspect you test kit(s) - check the expiration dates and/or double check your results with another kit (friend or LFS).

-Matt
 
What brand salt are you using, and what salinity are you keeping it at. What brand/type of pH test kit are you using.

Sometimes the easiest answer is the winner, and in this case it could just be a bad test kit and your pH is really where it should be.
 
Well I've used two types of newly bought dip sticks, however I think they're crap and am going to buy a liquid test set tomorrow, also my hermit and snail are acting funny so if not the pH then something is wrong. What really bugs me is that both different brands of dip tests gave me the same results, and I can't understand how I have a good dKH and a bad pH, just done another test and while it should be at it's highest just before lights out it has dipped since I dosed some kalk this morning, down to 7.5, I'm practically eating my nails at this end, I'm worried it's all gonna end in catastrophic failure and I can't for my life figure out why :mad:

Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium
 
I've just had a thought, my DIY rocks are incredibly porous, which is why my nitrates are so low and were before my skimmer, could it be that the sheer number of bacteria, or life, in the rocks are driving up CO2? Or is that a bit far fetched?

Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium
 
Sebastian_Troy said:
I've just had a thought, my DIY rocks are incredibly porous, which is why my nitrates are so low and were before my skimmer, could it be that the sheer number of bacteria, or life, in the rocks are driving up CO2? Or is that a bit far fetched?

Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium
Click to expand...

That's not impossible, but quite unlikely.

If you're running a skimmer especially - CO2 buildup while a skimmer is running would indicate your house air (or at least the air in the room in question) is over-saturated with CO2.

While unlikely in the extreme, this would be somewhat more likely in a new home or in a basement - insulation is so good (or air-circulation so bad) sometimes that air-exchange with the outside/other rooms suffers. If this is the case, running the air-intake line from your skimmer out a window should make a difference. Again, this would be a very unlikely scenario.

-Matt
 
I live in a 400 year old house in an upstairs room, the only reason the house wasn't blown down in the hurricane was because the wind blew through the house, it even moved some of the furniture inside the house, plus I sleep with a window open every night,

As for the skimmer I have only started using it recently, as I didn't need to run it before and it hasn't been running long enough to really cut back the number of bacteria in the tank, it's a shame because my sponge was doing so well!

Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium
 
Kurt_Nelson said:
What brand salt are you using, and what salinity are you keeping it at. What brand/type of pH test kit are you using.

Sometimes the easiest answer is the winner, and in this case it could just be a bad test kit and your pH is really where it should be.
Click to expand...

I'm using red sea salt, I have a salinity of about 1.025

Coraline algae isn't growing and hermit crab is acting up, so there must be something wrong with the pH even if two brands of test kit are both wrong in the same way,
But they are dip stick tests and hence they are rubbish, I'm gonna get liquid ones today

Sent from my iPhone using Aquarium
 
Well I went away for two weeks and disaster the tank leaked a little and my
Dads answer was to unplug everything, no water movement, heater, light, skimmer.... Anyway the pH was at 7 and I only have a snail left, pretty much everything else is dead, since I re established life support to the tank the pH has risen slightly, but still not right according to my seachem pH test, honestly I'm thinking of draining sterilising and starting from scratch, I've waited so long for this tank I may as well wait a little longer for it to work well instead of having this mess to contend with :(
 
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