Hi all! After reading everything I can about PH, I still have some questions.
Here is what I gather, please correct me where I may be wrong:
1)Better to have not ideal PH and be stable, then it to fluctuate in attempt to make it ideal.
2) if my water is hard, even things like peat may not lower my PH because it is too buffered???
3) aeration raises PH
4) bottled water, or tap will not give an accurate reading right away
5) you can let water sit or put a bubbler in it to get whatever gasses out more quickly and that will show the TRUE ph.
So here goes the questions:
A) how long really should I let water sit out in order to get an accurate reading?
B) should I stop using the bubbler in my tank when my PH is like 8.2? (it's a 5 gall)
C) when I just aerated my well water in a small container to make the ph rise to what I was hoping would be a true reflection of the ph, it went from like 7.8 to nearly 9 after a couple hours! does that mean my ph is really that high, or did I bring it up artificially higher than it is by aerating it too much??? My water in my tank seems to just want to be 8.2 no matter what I do. Problem is, my well water recently has been showing lower than usual ph right out the gate (or even after sitting in an open but small mouthed jug for 24 hrs) maybe because of recent snow melt? I like the lower reading, but I feel like it always creeps back up and stabilizes to 8.2 once in the tank. Should I now mix the crazy high ph with the lower ph and try to match my tank ph before adding?
thanks all!
Here is what I gather, please correct me where I may be wrong:
1)Better to have not ideal PH and be stable, then it to fluctuate in attempt to make it ideal.
2) if my water is hard, even things like peat may not lower my PH because it is too buffered???
3) aeration raises PH
4) bottled water, or tap will not give an accurate reading right away
5) you can let water sit or put a bubbler in it to get whatever gasses out more quickly and that will show the TRUE ph.
So here goes the questions:
A) how long really should I let water sit out in order to get an accurate reading?
B) should I stop using the bubbler in my tank when my PH is like 8.2? (it's a 5 gall)
C) when I just aerated my well water in a small container to make the ph rise to what I was hoping would be a true reflection of the ph, it went from like 7.8 to nearly 9 after a couple hours! does that mean my ph is really that high, or did I bring it up artificially higher than it is by aerating it too much??? My water in my tank seems to just want to be 8.2 no matter what I do. Problem is, my well water recently has been showing lower than usual ph right out the gate (or even after sitting in an open but small mouthed jug for 24 hrs) maybe because of recent snow melt? I like the lower reading, but I feel like it always creeps back up and stabilizes to 8.2 once in the tank. Should I now mix the crazy high ph with the lower ph and try to match my tank ph before adding?
thanks all!
