FoundMoney
Fish Crazy
I've been struggling with small fluctuations in my tank, where the pH will slowly rise during the course of a week. Out of my tap, water is around 6.8 but if I go more than 5 days to do a water change the pH can go as high as 7.6 and will generally be around 7.2 after a couple of days.
A while ago I added some "Pedras Preciousas" or precious stones (semi-precious actually) from Brazil that were given to me as a gift from a Brazilian friend. Since my tank has South American fish I thought this was a good use of the stones (I really didn't have anything else to do with them).
Most of these are quartz based stones, very hard, and are smoothed and polished. There are several types of agates, amethist, hematite, various other quartz stones, obsidian and black onyx. Most of this shouldn't cause any problems with pH. However, I was looking over the little sheet that came with the rocks and I realized I have something called sodalite. From what I've read sodalite is an feldspathoid which has a somewhat more open structure than other minerals. Since it is an alkali, it is possible that it is causing my pH to swing upward.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure which rocks are sodalite, so although many of the rocks should be harmless in my tank, I'm going to have to remove all of the ones that are either blue, white, gray or green.
Does anyone else have experience with sodalite?
A while ago I added some "Pedras Preciousas" or precious stones (semi-precious actually) from Brazil that were given to me as a gift from a Brazilian friend. Since my tank has South American fish I thought this was a good use of the stones (I really didn't have anything else to do with them).
Most of these are quartz based stones, very hard, and are smoothed and polished. There are several types of agates, amethist, hematite, various other quartz stones, obsidian and black onyx. Most of this shouldn't cause any problems with pH. However, I was looking over the little sheet that came with the rocks and I realized I have something called sodalite. From what I've read sodalite is an feldspathoid which has a somewhat more open structure than other minerals. Since it is an alkali, it is possible that it is causing my pH to swing upward.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure which rocks are sodalite, so although many of the rocks should be harmless in my tank, I'm going to have to remove all of the ones that are either blue, white, gray or green.
Does anyone else have experience with sodalite?
