robertmarda
Aquarium Advice Freak
It has been a while since I have logged on and read in the forums and posted in them and so I ask that you please forgive me if my questions have been answered elsewhere and feel free to point me in the right direction.
I am coming out of a period of being lazy about doing fish tank maintenance and am rededicating myself to being more diligent. I have also forgotten some of the things I learned, among those is how to alter pH naturally.
I read a few posts here and saw that crushed coral can raise the pH to 7.8. I never knew that putting it in the filter was an option. Will just a little bit raise it all the way to 7.8 and keep it there? Does it loose its ability to raise the pH after a while and need to be replaced?
If I remember right sea shells and such can raise the pH also. The ones we used in a tank at work were boiled first before being placed in the tank. One thing I realised today was this. The oyster shells put in the tank about a year or 2 ago seem to be completely intact. However, shells that I found at the beach seemed to almost completely dissolve over time. Those shells were solid white. Feel free to let me know if I shouldn't have put these shells in the tank. But that again brings me to a similar question as I stated above. Do such shells loose their ability to raise the pH over time? I ask this because the oyster shells seemed to work when first placed in the tank but now the pH is low inspite of the oysters being in the tank.
Or are there other factors that can lower the pH more than the shells raise it?
I am coming out of a period of being lazy about doing fish tank maintenance and am rededicating myself to being more diligent. I have also forgotten some of the things I learned, among those is how to alter pH naturally.
I read a few posts here and saw that crushed coral can raise the pH to 7.8. I never knew that putting it in the filter was an option. Will just a little bit raise it all the way to 7.8 and keep it there? Does it loose its ability to raise the pH after a while and need to be replaced?
If I remember right sea shells and such can raise the pH also. The ones we used in a tank at work were boiled first before being placed in the tank. One thing I realised today was this. The oyster shells put in the tank about a year or 2 ago seem to be completely intact. However, shells that I found at the beach seemed to almost completely dissolve over time. Those shells were solid white. Feel free to let me know if I shouldn't have put these shells in the tank. But that again brings me to a similar question as I stated above. Do such shells loose their ability to raise the pH over time? I ask this because the oyster shells seemed to work when first placed in the tank but now the pH is low inspite of the oysters being in the tank.
Or are there other factors that can lower the pH more than the shells raise it?