PH problem remains....Getting worse?

[Brenden]

A lot of you are familiar with my post last week about my ph. If you are not then in short it would not stay above 7.9. I could add a entire container of seachem 8.3 buffer only to test the next day and it returned to 7.9 I spoke to mike at liverocks.com about this and he said when I put this last order of rock in my tank that after a few weeks the organisms that bore in the rock will become active and my ph will stabilize were I want it. I looked at my ph probe today and my ph has dropped to 7.85. How? I am going to wait a "few weeks" before I take any action but how can adding 350 lbs of live calcium carbonate rock drop my ph?

 

[MT79]

I would not worry about PH until the tank is done cycling. There is so much going on in a cycling tank, keeping tabs on PH is useless. Do you know the ammo and trite levels? That 350lbs LR had to do something to one of those numbers.

 

[quarryshark]

Don't know if this was asked before, but do you have a glass cover? Do you have a lot of surface water movement?
He is a way to test if you are getting good surface gas exchange.
Take a small container of you tank water, airate the heck out of it for a couple of hours and check the PH. If it goes up, then you know you are getting insufficient gas exchange and CO2 is getting trapped causing the PH to drop.

 

[Brenden]

Quarryshark I will do your test over the weekend. Thanks FYI I do not have a cover. I currently have around 1500 gph on the surface it will increase when my 8000gph replacement pump arrives on Tuesday.
MT79 nitrite and nitrate are undetectable ammo is .08 free and 1.2 total The biggest change I have seen is my skimmer is going crazy now.

 

[MT79]

ammo is .08 free and 1.2 total

There you go! Cycling causes higher than normal amounts of acid to be present in the water which will bring down the PH. When I cycled my first tank I noticed the same thing. When it was done cycling PH was never an issue. HTH

 

[quarryshark]

Oh, I see you are in the cycling process? I missed that
I agree, I wouldn't worry too much about it for now. 7.9 for a cycling tank is not that bad. Have you tested your ALK?
BTW, love your quotes in your sig....

 

[Brenden]

I checked Alk 2 days ago. It was 2.5 and CA was 550 I will check it over the weekend also and post on Monday.
Like the quotes? I collected guns for years, purchased one a month now I have no more room in my safe so I have a new "cheaper" hobby What was I thinking? 3 months= $14,000 At least my wife and kids get use out of it.