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Pet Forum / Aquaria / Cichlids / March 2004Buffer
Can we add Sea Buffer to our cichlid tank to boost the PH? Need to raise it significantly. Currently at 7.4. Anyone can you help? Terry > Can we add Sea Buffer to our cichlid tank to boost the PH? > Need to raise it significantly. Currently at 7.4. > Anyone can you help? > Terry wade through the information in the re: KH test kits thread for info. on buffering your tank. You can use simple baking soda to raise you Ph up to about 8.4. What size is your tank? Rick >Can we add Sea Buffer to our cichlid tank to boost the PH? >Need to raise it significantly. Currently at 7.4. >Anyone can you help? You'll want to test your tap water for pH, KH and GH, then read this: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/buffer_recipe.php You'll want to pick up some baking soda, epsom salt and marine salt (you can use table salt, but alas, it lacks many minerals found in marine salt). Once you have those, use the buffer recipe to come up with your own formula, and run with that. It's cheap and works very well. Just keep in mind you'll want to add the buffer VERY SLOWLY as to avoid shocking your fish with sudden water chemistry changes. Good luck. > >Can we add Sea Buffer to our cichlid tank to boost the PH? > >Need to raise it significantly. Currently at 7.4. [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > Good luck. Battlelance, just our of curiosity what size tank do you have that you use this recipe on?. I took a look at it and unless I read it wrong I would have to add 13 tablespoons of Epsom salts, about 13 teaspoons of baking soda and 13 teaspoons of marine salt to my 66 gallon tank to get my PH and hardness up to about my current levels. I can see why you suggest to add this very slowly. I used no where near those amounts and my Ph started off similar to the original posters. I would suggest baking soda about one tablespoon to about 33 gallons or about half of what your site suggests and then check Ph levels and 13 tablespoons of salt, I don't think so, not in my tank. Anyway we should keep in mind that recreating the water conditions that say African cichlids live in is probably changing the water considerably from what they were raised in as most of those cichlids we buy from LFS were born and raised in some fish farm somewhere USA using water conditions that are available where they are raised. To the original poster, there are numerous sites out there that give information about buffering water and you will find that few of them are the same. Rick >Battlelance, just our of curiosity what size tank do you have that you use >this recipe on?. I took a look at it and unless I read it wrong I would have >to add 13 tablespoons of Epsom salts, about 13 teaspoons of baking soda and >13 teaspoons of marine salt to my 66 gallon tank to get my PH and hardness >up to about my current levels. I use it on an 80 gallon tank. I would have to go dig up my original calculations to find out how much I would need to add to get it to where it is now (pH 8.0, KH ~200), because once I got it up to this level, you just have to maintain it based on the amount of water you remove from the tank. I do know it was nowhere near your numbers. Did you actually take a bucket of dechlorinated water and see how many tsp/tbsp's you would have to add to reach your desired levels? It's not something you could just guess at. I'm probably being too picky, since my original pH is ~7.5, and the africans should handle this just fine, but my KH and GH are > 10, and I really wanted to bring that KH up. I also added crushed coral to the substrate and in the filter, and I'm currently monitoring the results to see if I can get a higher pH and KH, without altering the formula I use for the rift lake buffer recipe. And hey, it's cheaper than the "rift lake in a bottle" you can buy from the LFS :) Oh, I also wanted to mention that it takes time for the baking soda and epsom salts to work. I was a tad hasty when I first did my calculations, and my pH shot up in the tank causing my yellow labs to start scratching, and they eventually both died. <sniff> > >Battlelance, just our of curiosity what size tank do you have that you use > >this recipe on?. I took a look at it and unless I read it wrong I would have [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > calculations, and my pH shot up in the tank causing my yellow labs to > start scratching, and they eventually both died. <sniff> In my tank I initially added one tablespoon of baking soda which brought up my PH but I want my KH for my Mbunas's to be between 14-17 so I added another couple of teaspoons. I did some research and using the recipe as described on that site for my tank would give me an initial PH of 8.2 and a KH of 322 or something akin to liquid rock. Using my formula would give me a PH of 8.2 and a KH of 14 to 15, adding two more teaspoons of baking soda would keep my PH at 8.2 but raise my KH to 17-18 range which is perfect for me. Adding Epsom salts and or marine salts in MHO is not really necessary in a African tank although it does add some minerals and trace elements that some recommend. Research on waters of Lake Malawi will reveal that the PH range is 7.8-8.0 with very limited number of elements so adding marine salt introduces a wide range of elements which are not found in the natural biotope of the fish. Marine salt of course is not a buffering additive however it does contain carbonates which in my particular example would raise my PH from 8.2 to 8.4. For Africans from Lake Malawi , 8.2 would IMO be the upper limit of where one should be. Marine water has a ph of 8.4 and is already out of the range of Africans. Anyway, nothing wrong with a healthy discussion as everyone benefits in the end as it should prompt those interested in doing more research. Regards Rick |
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