Cycling And Low Ph

[backtotropical]

Silent cycling works and works well. People have kept successful tanks without even having a filter, just letting the plants do the work. It is however unreliable.

For instance, the most common cause of it going wrong is if algae gets a hold. This inhibits the growth of the plants and means they won't convert ammonia so quickly. You can see where i'm going with this.

I would try to keep your pH up for the cycling period by means of water changes or other, and that way, should algae set in, at least you have an established filter which should be able to cope with the ammonia etc.

Let us know what you decide.

Cheers

BTT

 

[Miss Wiggle]

oh yeah teh ADA aquasoil stuff lowers your pH for sure, it wears off with time though. we've some in our big tank (£300 worth of substrate..... i still find that hard to stomach!!) and it dropped the pH to around 6. was fine though, was in a mature and heavily planted tank so the plants took in anything the bacteria couldn't meaning the filter was effectivley just there for mechanical filtration not for biological.

one thing i will warn you about with silent cycling, is pruning. we've done this before, done a bit too heavy a prune and suddenly ammonia shot up in a tank full of fish. killed my lovely oldest angel which i was devastated about. so keep your pruning little and often.

 

[gumby]

I got home and was tired last night, I didn't get a chance to do the big water change. Hopefully I'll get to it tonight, or over the weekend. The ammonia is still at a steady 4, I didn't even bother with the ph test.

I think I will give the cycling another go. Do a "huge" water change and hope that it will raise the ph. How long will the soil lower the ph until it wears off?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i think it's a gradual thing, maybe over a year or so the effect would have nearly diminshed

 

[waterdrop]

i think it's a gradual thing, maybe over a year or so the effect would have nearly diminshed

That'll be a cheery thing for him to read It'll be interesting to see the rate at which his pH drops.

When my KH was 1, pH would drop significantly each day of fishless, with my KH at 4 it drops very slowly, when KH was 5 it seemed stuck at the same as my tap. I worry a little about the baking soda being in there but it seems the only timely solution to my low KH.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[gumby]

LOL over the course of a year. That's just grand!

Miss Wiggles and waterdrop posting right after one another. It's like a tag team. Thank ya'll.


If the ada soil will constantly lower my ph, would it be even possible for me to do a complete cycle? Does that mean I would have to do a wc daily to keep my ph up?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

it depends how low your pH really is, i reckon you need to get a digital pH meter and check the exact reading.

if you can keep the pH up above 6 then the tank will cycle, slowly but it will cycle.

if the pH is between 5.5 and 6 then you've not really much chance of getting it cycled and silent cycling is probably the way to go

if the pH is below 5.5 then you'll get a different species of bacteria, the tank will cycle, but slowly.

while i don't usually advocate it, if you're going for the heavily planted thing, i'd take some time and effort into getting a good solid plant growth so that you can sustain a silent cycle. keep adding ammonia up to 2/3ppm a day, the plants will love it and hopefully some bacteria will develop. theoretically you should reach a point where the ammonia is used up in 12 hrs, it'll be mostly used by the plants as opposed to the filter but it makes no real odds, the ammonia some fish produce can still be used up and that's what matters, you won't see a nitrite spike though like fishless cycling.

but tbh it really is important to get an accurate pH reading at this point so you know what you're dealing with

 

[gumby]

Well I did about a 90% water change over the weekend. I managed to get the PH up to 6.4. But it dropped back down to 6 or below over night. Ammonia levels are still at a constant 4.

I'm just going to leave the tank alone until the plants establish themselves nicely. Or at least until the HC have somewhat rooted themselves more.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

fair enough, if your priority is the plants then get that all established and then cycle it,

 

[gumby]

The strange thing is that the plants do not seem to be absorbing the ammonia. It's staying around 4. Any thoughts?

 

[Tobigara]

i'd like to add something about adding baking soda if i may.

Due to having a kh of 0 and pH of 7 in my tap water i add baking soda when i do water changes. i was told that 1 tsp per 10 gallons will raise the kh to 4 without raising the pH. that is wrong tho. using the ratio that i was told raised my kh to 2-3 and raised my pH to about 7.5. if you wanna try baking soda keep that in mind

 

[waterdrop]

i'd like to add something about adding baking soda if i may.

Due to having a kh of 0 and pH of 7 in my tap water i add baking soda when i do water changes. i was told that 1 tsp per 10 gallons will raise the kh to 4 without raising the pH. that is wrong tho. using the ratio that i was told raised my kh to 2-3 and raised my pH to about 7.5. if you wanna try baking soda keep that in mind

wow, interesting observation. I'll bet if that recommendation came from TFF it might be that drhelm link that many use for KH/pH things. It says almost that exact wording, here is the quote from it:

"One teaspoon of baking soda added to 50 liters of water can raise the kH of the water by approx 4 OdH without a major affect on pH."

So really it is saying 1 tsp for 13.2 US gallons will raise KH to 4 without raising the pH. BUT, my observations are similar to yours -- I in fact had to use more baking soda than that to acheive the same amount of raising KH, so I agree with you it needs to be higher. For me though, it indeed raised KH without raising pH. For me it just leaves my tap pH (7.5) the same but raises KH and then does indeed allow my pH to stay stable (for a while, then at some point it the buffer is used up and it begins to drop pretty rapidly again.)

In gumby's case for the fishless cycling, it might be really beneficial to go the crushed-coral-in-bag-in-filter route because gumby's problem is not going to go away and at pH 6.4 the cycling will be extremely slow -- I really think mid 7's is much better for the cycling and crushed coral, though it would take longer getting up to speed, would then raise pH more and would last much longer, probably all the way through cycling. The only question is whether it would be too bad for the plants and I don't know the answer to that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[gumby]

Well, I just checked the ammonia levels again last night, and it's still at 4. The plants doesn't seem like it's taking in the ammonia.

I may just have to get some crushed coral to get this cycle process moving. How much do they normally cost?

 

[waterdrop]

When I went out looking for crushed coral I ended up having to buy a huge bag (can't remember the cost but probably not extreme in either direction..) - it was intended for marine aquariums. I've never opened it yet as for my situation I switched my approach to baking soda.

 

[gumby]

Is there a specific type of baking soda, or can any run of the mill baking soda work?
Also how much baking soda should I put into the filter bag?

Thanks for answering my questions.