palacekeeper
Aquarium Advice Newbie
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2019
- Messages
- 6
Hello all, first post in this forum. Recently decided to start up a freshwater biocube 16 to decorate my home office. It’s been about 20 years since I set up an aquarium so I’m definitely rusty.
I’m holding off on adding any fish to my newly started tank until I confirm whether things are ready.
Here’s the situation:
1. Tank is crystal clear, no ammonia or nitrites.
2. Ph from my tap is 7 on the nose and is well water that passes through a water treatment system.
3. Standard gravel from the fish store, spiderwood, plastic and silk plants, small air stone are the only things in the tank.
4. Standard filter that is included with the biocube and Aqueon heater.
5. I added TLC aquarium optimizer per recommendation at the fish store.
The tank has been running about 5 days now and every morning the ph is back at around 7.6 tested with TLC master kit. If I use ph down to lower it, its back up the next morning.
I tried removing the wood, filter cartridge, lowering the aeration to almost off, but ph still rises back up.
I tried separately testing a glass of water with, and without gravel and the ph stays the same, so it doesn’t appear to be the gravel or the water itself.
The only thing left to test is removing the air stone and the plastic and silk plants, but they seem like unlikely candidates.
Is it just normal for the ph to rise like this for a period of time or am I missing something?? I don’t want to add any fish and then have the ph rise .6 overnight.
Thanks for any suggestions!!
I’m holding off on adding any fish to my newly started tank until I confirm whether things are ready.
Here’s the situation:
1. Tank is crystal clear, no ammonia or nitrites.
2. Ph from my tap is 7 on the nose and is well water that passes through a water treatment system.
3. Standard gravel from the fish store, spiderwood, plastic and silk plants, small air stone are the only things in the tank.
4. Standard filter that is included with the biocube and Aqueon heater.
5. I added TLC aquarium optimizer per recommendation at the fish store.
The tank has been running about 5 days now and every morning the ph is back at around 7.6 tested with TLC master kit. If I use ph down to lower it, its back up the next morning.
I tried removing the wood, filter cartridge, lowering the aeration to almost off, but ph still rises back up.
I tried separately testing a glass of water with, and without gravel and the ph stays the same, so it doesn’t appear to be the gravel or the water itself.
The only thing left to test is removing the air stone and the plastic and silk plants, but they seem like unlikely candidates.
Is it just normal for the ph to rise like this for a period of time or am I missing something?? I don’t want to add any fish and then have the ph rise .6 overnight.
Thanks for any suggestions!!