PH problems Linked to Dechlorinator

[jarrod0987]

I was recently doing a full range of water tests on my freshwater Aquariums. When i Originaly filled them, My filtered Tap water was testing about 7.1 which is perfect. I tested the aquariums and all the test were in range except somehow ph was very high. 7.6 to 8.2!!!! how can this happen? PH is supposed to drop over time not go Up!!!!. Well the fish seemed there usual happy selfs (see article on identifying fish stress) I did not want to radicaly change PH all at once because that is worse then a ph that is off. So I decided to get to the bottom of this mystery. I retested my tap water and even out of the charcoal filter it was off the scale over 8.8!!! I was shocked. Darn city must be screwing with the water adding some chemical. Oh well. I checked the phosphate level and it was normal. I thought to myself, whatever it is, I wonder if it will offgas (go out of water on its own if left to open air) I had made up 5 gal of water to declhorinate over 48 hours ago so i tested it. It was about 8.4!!! what is going on?. One last hope. I had some water that was for my plants. I had left it to stand (leave out in the open air) for a day or so. I had not added any dechlorinator because it was only a very small amount of water. I tested it. it was acceptable. around 7.5. Still kinda high but what the fish in pet store are kept at so is ok. Now I got to thinking. Obviously something is goofy with the tap Water right now. I will continue to test over next few days. However I wonder if the dechlorinors I have been adding are effecting anything? I dont remmber which one i used in the 5 gal batch and no one is to say the tap water wasnt bad already. So i decided to test using the plant water I had left standing. I devided it into 3 containers. tested them all. all around 7.5. Ok then to each I added 1 of the three dechlorinating products I had. StressCoat made by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, Amquel Plus (I did not have regular amquel to test) made by Kordon, And Prime made by Seachem. The results I got where that StressCoat seems to have no effect on PH. Prime raised it to about 7.8 to 8.2 which is probably acceptable for cichlids and also I am testing now to see if value drops after 24 hours of offgasing. Lastly was amquel which put it above 8.4. I will see if the value drops down within 24 hours however until further notice i will only be using stresscoat for dechlorination and am thinking seriosuly about only using aeration and perhaps charcoal to absoarb what ever the heck the water utility has been dumping in lately.

 

[Jchillin]

Very nice controlled testing. Though I had never heard of any dechlorinator raising ph in the past, your experiment certainly lends weight to the possibility.

Is Aqua-Pure (I think it's made by Hagen or Nutri-Fin) available near you? This is an excellent dechlorinator and may be better for you.

Also, I would check with the local water authority to see what the actual water tests are. Since you are in Utica, it may be available on the NY Gov website.

 

[jarrod0987]

continued

has been about 8 hours so far. I have retested the stresscoat and the prime batch i made this morning along with a bucket of filtered water i just left standing out. all of them have the same ph of around 8.5 to 8. 6. I discovered th ewater in my brita water filter is the proper 7.3 ish ph. i ruled out the temperature as being a factor by warming up the sample that did not change results. so whatever chemical it is the brita is removign it well the inline charcaol sediment filter i have is not.
using th ebrita water i retested all 3 chemicals stresscoat still did nto change the PH. this time prime did not either (strange but i repeated and got same results) perhaps i somehow screwed it up during original test. The amquel Plus, Unfortuantly, still raised the ph to over 8.4 i repeated..... same result.I am going to retest again in another 8 hours or so. Also I have a spare 10 galon aquarium and a power filter rated for 30 gal with some virgin activated carbon. I am goin gto fill it with the tap water and add no dechlorinators and see what happens with the ph.

 

[tkos]

What is the KH and GH of your water? Do you have chlorine or chloramine?

 

[jarrod0987]

OK, The stroy continues. After another 8 hours (16 total) the standing water with no chemicals added has dropped down to around 8.1 to 8.2. both th eprime and the stresscoat batches are still over 8.4. My tap is still well over 8.8. I did a test on the brita water pitcher and that water is 6.5!!! I tested the kh of the tap and it is 3 dhk which is lower then the usual 4dkh I g et. i dont know if i have a low buffer bounce problem or not with the pitcher water. anyone here know if 3dkh is unstable? I cannot test for GH because my test kit was bad out of the box. The 5 gal i left running with activated carbon and a power filter has droped the most (except for the brita which maybe some kind of acidic chemical in the filter I dont know) it is know about 7.5 to 7 .6 after only 8 hours. When it is finished dropping I plan to repeat the experiment with only aeration and no activated carbon to see what happens.

 

[jarrod0987]

problem solved, dechlorinators exhonerated

Wonder full discovery, Problem Solved, Dechlorinaters names Cleared.

Ok to make a long story short I am goign to skip the details of the experiments Did because there were alot. each I repeated multiple times. I have found that when I added a small amount of the over 8.8 ph tap water to a jar and shock it as hard as i could for 10 seconds the ph droped to 6.8 to 7.0. Upon dechlorinating with either of the 3 mentioned products ph became 7.0 to 7.2. Previously I was using overdoses of the dechlorinator to try to see what effect it had on ph. But in all fairness I decided to only use teh recommended dosage and see what happend. What happened is that when used in proper dose none of the 3 products raised pH at all. Stresscoat did not seem to change ph no matter how much i added. Amquel Plus will raise it to about 7.8 to 8.0 if you overdose too much. Prime you have to overdose ALOT to get any PH increase. I realise when I first stated that prime has raised the PH some that it was quite a large overdose because I keep forgeting Primes uses alot less teh other products do for same result. In conclusion I feel neither of these 3 products Stresscoat, Amquel Plus, or Prime will raise your PH if you use only the reccomended dosage. I also reccomend, now that I have learned the hard way,to test your tap waters PH every time you make up a batch although you might want to wait until after you have aerated the heck out of it which is what I will always do from no won and reccomend anybody with scewed up water from there tap also do. I am going to now test to see how long an airstone in a 5 gal carboy of water takes before PH settles.

 

[TomK2]

Aha, I was going to ask what the dechlor dose was in your test! I was surprised by your findings since most of the dechlorinators are weak acids. Not that there couldn't be other additives that might mess up a pH test, or be some buffers to keep the dechlor stuff stable in the bottle for long periods. I had seen the reverse problem a while back. I had made a math error, and had used at least twice as much dechlor as needed for many water changes over manyl weeks , and found the pH to decline from 7.8 to 7.4 . The manufacturer responded to my inquiries, and thought it possible but improbable that the dechlor caused the change.

Since I don't have chloramines, now I aerate my water instead of using dechlor.