Cycling advice

[blackandwhite]

Hi. I am fishless cycling for the first time and I need advice/ reassurance. I have been testing fairly regularly and my tank can now cycle around 3 ppm of ammonia overnight and my nitrite and nitrates are off the chart.

Through the whole process my pH has been fairly stable, starting at around 8.6 when I do a water change (tap water is pretty high pH) and slowly decreasing to around 7.0 over the course of a couple weeks. I usually do a massive water change to bring the pH back up and also to clear the Ramon's out of the water. I have driftwood in there that releases a lot of tannins.

So since I saw nitrates on my tests I've been keeping an eye on my pH because the articles say how towards the end on cycling you'll have a pH crash. And yes, I had a pH crash overnight. Last night pH was around 8 and this morning 6.2. So I quickly did a 70% water change.

I spoke to my local fish store and the guy said that the tannin from the driftwood is causing the pH crash, even though it's been there the whole time with no pH problems. Anyway, I had also had a weird white fluffy growth on my driftwood, so not knowing if that was bacteria or mold I decided to take my wood out of the tank and scrub, and pour boiling water on them and soak them out of the tank.

Long story short, I am just wondering how to deal with the pH crash? And also if it is going to happen again once I have fish in the tank? And when the wood is back in the tank?

 

[Davon]

I can't speak to the driftwood. I have no experience with that. But I did just finish a fishless cycle and struggled with low pH the entire time. The advice given to me from people here was to not worry about the pH too much. Mine stayed around 6.6-6.2 during my entire cycle. However, like I said I'm not sure if it would be different in terms if the driftwood. My tap water is typically 6.6 and now that I have fish, I have a bag of 1 cup aragonite in my filter and my pH is at 7-7.2. I have a 65gal tank.

 

[blackandwhite]

The pH of my tap water is like 8.4. And overnight it drops down to 6.2. I can ignore that for cycling if that's not a concern but I'm worried about when I have fish in my tank. That kind of a drop will kill them for sure.
I'm just not sure if this will happen again after my cycle is done or if it's just the end of cycle crash.

 

[toolman]

After you do end of cycle water changes and start doing weekly water changes your tap water will keep your ph up.

 

[Fresh2o]

Is it possible that you have very soft water and not enough buffers to maintain a stable pH? Perhaps the addition of crushed coral could help increase the hardness and reduce the amount of pH swing. However, I would get a measurement of GH/KH before adding anything.

 

[nirbhao]

You may need to let your change water "age" overnight. That kind of pH drop sounds like CO2 gassing off.

 

[blackandwhite]

I have a kh of 4 and a GH of 161.1 ppm. I have no idea if that's high or low. I don't really understand the whole chemistry thing.
I don't know about CO2 gassing. I've done massive water changes before and the pH decreased slowly overtime.