Drastic Drop In Ph

[waterdrop]

If its a mature cycled filter you don't need to be that gentle when cleaning it. Yes of course you need to always use tank water for rinsing the media but you should indeed take each type of media out of the filter and perform a cleaning in a bucket of the just-removed tank water. If its a sponge type media the it gets multiple squeezes, not super hard squeezes, but you should try to get the debris out of the sponge (the bacteria cling too tightly to come off during this.) If its loose media like ceramic rings, ceramic gravel or bioballs then it should get dunked and swished multiple times in the tank water bucket to loosen and allow most debris to float away. Carbon(aka activated charcoal) of course is not a biomedia, its a chemical media and as such is not needed in the filter on a regular basis. It should be on the shelf ready to come in if you need to remove medications or tannins from wood or perhaps a mysterious organic odor. It only lasts 3 days and then needs to be removed and trashed, which is another reason we don't regularly use it.

Being overly gentle on your filter media cleans and going 2 weeks between gravel cleanings on a regular basis together would go pretty far to explain fluctuations in your test numbers that take you away from the rock solid zero ammonia and zero nitrite that you want to see being maintained. Its also possible of course that your filter may not have enough media volume for your fish load.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Drum4JC]

Wow drop, thanks for the detailed insight.


My filter is the Aqueon 30. It has the charcoal to catch any debris and two plastic pieces for the bacteria. They claim it should handle 30 gallon tanks, and I assumed that meant guilt stocked using the "1 inch rule" for small fish. Any thoughts?remember I have 26 Gallons.

So my lesson learned is to vacuum THOROUGHLY weekly and slosh the plastic pieces in just removed tank water while I'm at it.

Next question. you say the carbon filter only works for a few days? Aqueon says to change it at 4-6 weeks! I've been changing it out at an average of 3 weeks and it's raunchy when I pull it out. So here's the Q. Do I spend the money to replace it each week or just run without it for a while and then put a fresh one in?

PS: ph is at 7.4 now. Hopefully it will be stable now. Again my tap is at 7.6 to 7.8. It's good to see how wide a range most of these guys tolerated.

 

[waterdrop]

No, no, you don't start replacing the carbon frequently, you don't use it at all! The business about replacing it every 4 to 6 weeks has nothing to do with you as a hobbyist, that's just a marketing thing dreamed up to keep up the steady flow of small consumable items off the retail shelf, like most of the other chemicals and "nostrums." The fact that carbon has a genuine use by knowledgeable hobbyists just made it all the better for the marketers because it leads to vague misunderstandings in beginners who know they've heard "something good" about carbon (usually from a store employee) just the same as they've heard "something good" about bacteria (and thus wouldn't a "bottle" of it be good, lol.) When you find a true hobbyist forum like this there's a ton of pre-hobbyist garbage you often have that has to get tossed out during the first year or so.

You're going to need to find sponge cuttings or ceramic gravel or plastic pot scrubbers or something that you can successfully fit in the space where the carbon went. You're going to need to devote some weeks to seeing whether your new regimen of gravel and, periodically (2 or 3 weeks between?) filter media cleaning will make a significant change to your water chemistry readings. Frankly, there's a bit of a chance in my mind that the filter may not be up to it but I've been proven wrong about that before with these types of "screen designed" HOB filters. Hopefully OM47 will see this and give an analysis of this particular filter or be there to help as you make a further assessment in coming weeks. The problem I'm worrying about with just whether, even with the -right- biological media, it has enough capacity even for a standard 1 inch fish load of that tank. It may though, so don't worry about it too much, just keep good logs of your tests in your notebook with the goal of understanding those fluctuations better and seeing if we can make them change.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

I am not familiar with your model filter but it sounds like you have some kind of cartridge with carbon in it. If that is the case, the carbon is not the thing that you are really throwing away. The bad thing that you are throwing away would be the fabric that makes up the carbon's container. In a whisper filter the cartridges look like some kind of felted material on a plastic frame with a tiny amount of carbon inside. The felted fabric is really the main part of the biofilter in those filters even though there is another bit that they call the biofilter. On that type of filter, I rinse the felted cartridge thoroughly in used tank water and I never even remove the thing that they call a biofilter.

 

[Drum4JC]

Ok. It's been about 8 days with daily water changes and 4good vacuums. Still no stable ph. I'm thinking thaty tap water does not have a high enough kh. Even my quarantine tank is low now. I'm desperate enough to go get that ph 7.0 stuff. Otherwise, will a bag of crushed coral do that? This is really frustrating. Good news is the fish seem fine.

 

[OldMan47]

A bag of crushed shell or crushed coral in the filter will move the pH higher and help to stabilize it.

 

[Drum4JC]

Thanks "oldman". I have some shells I can crush and put in a stocking.

I'm amazed the fish seem fine with the stress of the past week.

 

[Drum4JC]

Update: I put crushed coral in a stocking and put it in the filter. The ph went from about 6.6 to 7.0 overnight. I removed about 2/3 of it and left the rest in and it held steady at 7.

Would it still be effective if I put in the back of the tank covered by a thin layer of sub? Or will the water flow in the filter be most effective?

 

[OldMan47]

You need to keep a good water flow over the shell for it to be effective. An alternative for a really high stable pH is to use it as a substrate as if it was a saltwater tank but that will drive pH to almost 8.0.

 

[Drum4JC]

Water flow. Got it. I'll keep it in the filter. Thanks for the advice, it's been a real blessing. The ph is holding steady at 7.0 now.

 

[Drum4JC]

The ph crept up to 7.2 so I did an experiment and removed the crushed coral for about 24 hours. It dropped to right about 7.0 so I'll tweek the amount in the stocking to just keep up with the tank activity and maintain right about 7.0. Thanks again for the advice.

 

[Drum4JC]

Just thought I'd give a quick update: the crushed coral in the filter has kept the pH right around 7 ever since. The next thing that came along was a whole new cycling process! The pH crash must have killed most or all of the bacteria because the ammonia spiked for awhile, then the nitrite, and currently nitrate with still some residual nitrite readings. Fortunately, with frequent water changes and Amquel+ treatments, the fish haven't appeared to have any ill effects from this whole ordeal. It's been a little over a month so I hope I'll be cycled real soon.

 

[waterdrop]

Just thought I'd give a quick update: the crushed coral in the filter has kept the pH right around 7 ever since. The next thing that came along was a whole new cycling process! The pH crash must have killed most or all of the bacteria because the ammonia spiked for awhile, then the nitrite, and currently nitrate with still some residual nitrite readings. Fortunately, with frequent water changes and Amquel+ treatments, the fish haven't appeared to have any ill effects from this whole ordeal. It's been a little over a month so I hope I'll be cycled real soon.

Glad to hear that about the pH. This is why crushed coral is our method of choice for raising pH when fish are in. Did you feel that tweaking the *amount* of crushed coral in your mesh bag was a good way of adjusting the amount the pH was raised?

A "crash" of pH down to 6.0 would not kill off your bacteria, it simply causes them to not grow into bigger colonies for a while but then they start back up. Its usually only really a concern during fishless cycling. I still suspect that you had excessive debris in the substrate and filter and that upping your maintenance is the thing that's changing the situation, but of course its all a bit of a mix and hard to tell.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[waynelle]

Hi all, wondering if you can help me on this subject, you seem to know quite a lot

The PH in my Dad's tank has been dropping around the acid region lately (although for the pasty couple of weeks it has been fine). And after reading this post I'm wondering if it could be the filter. The type of filter in the tank uses cotton wool type media, think its called Filter Floss, which we normally change completely on a regular basis, we never wash the balls either. So I'm wondering if this could be the cause of the problems with the PH. Should we be washing the balls in the bucket tank water and changing the Filter Floss less?

We used PH Up, to get the PH back up but just wanting to know more info in case the level starts to drop again.

Thanks.

 

[Drum4JC]

Hi 'Drop

I haven't messed with the amount since that one time early on. I've done uote a bit of water changes so I needed a lot of buffeting going on! Once all is "normal" (whatever that is!) then maybe I'll need to.

Well I'm glad the colonies didn't totally die out but I'm definitely recycling to some degree. But now that I think about it the levels never went sky high, just mid range on the readings. Again, I'm happy to report that my little friends didn't seem
to mind the ordeal.

Speaking of cleaning, I have a question in the plants section about how to vacuum if I put live plants in there. Remove them or work around them. I'm looking "low tech". Just two live plants at this point. I won't put anything in until I'm sure the chemistry is stable.