ph problems

Here is a bit of a head scratcher.
Yesterday the ph in one of my tanks was 7.2 and today it was 4.8(panic).
I hadent changed anything in the tank or added anything new.
The ph meter is workink fine and i'm slowly getting the ph back on track.
Luckily there was no deth's but i would still like to know what caused the ph crash. Any suggestions? :shock:

Do you have test results for KH and GH, if the values of these are low, your pH can drop very quickly if left untreated.

KH-2.26dH gH-4.48dH I know these are low but thats what i'm used to.
That is what they were the evening befor the ph crash and the same on the evening of the crash.
All the other readings are fine except for amonia been a little high at 0.01 mg/l.
I have the ph back on track now at 7.2, so i will just keep an eye on it.
I just cant figure out why it crashed.
I have also moved all the fish because i expect most of the bacteria to have died in my filter with such low ph. I will give it a few weeks before i reintreduce any fish in to it.

Id suspect the Ph probe could be faulty or needs to be recalibrated.....could be wrong though, but highly unusual unless you inject co2 or something like that, then its quite possible as the water in Dublin is quite soft and the KH will generally need buffering with bicarbonate of soda.

The probe is fine, or at least the readings on the other tanks are spot on.
I had recalibrated to make sure the readings were right.
No Co2 injection.
As i say, a head scratcher.

I went through something similar a while back - fish dying for no apparent reason. Checked Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate - all good and thought that doing regular water changes and medicating for internal parasites might sort out the problem. Anyway when the problem was still ongoing I checked the PH and it had crashed. Problem was the actual water supply, and water changes were not helping. Boosted the PH and all came back to normal. I'd never had that problem before or again (water suppy back to usual 7ish) but wise enough to check the PH weekly. Since I have soft water I've also added some calcium based rocks to provide a buffer.

Monty

I'm still getting fluctuating readings from the tap water and have since lost a tank of plants that i have put a lot of time into.

Sorry to hear about the plants. A number of plants - vallis for example from my personal experience, - don't like soft water and will simply rot away. I'd try putting something in to help provide a buffering capacity and keep the PH stable. Unfortunately for you if you are getting fluctuating reading on your tap water then you have a difficult job when doing water changes to try and have a level of consistency.

Just wondering, how are you regulating the temperature of the water you are adding to the tank?

The reason I ask is that I used to fill a bucket with tap water, top it off with hot tap water from the imersion cistern, add dechlorinator and add it to the tank.

I used to get serious fluctuations in the ph/kh/gh levels. I subsequently realised that the cause of my problems was the hot water from the cistern had very high heavy metal readings and that it was poisioning my fish. I now boil a kettle of water instead of using the hot water from the tap.

Up to recently i was using a 50 gallon holding tank for my water changes that was constintly heated and airated. But this had to go to make room for a discus tank.
Now i filter the water from the tap through an ionic carbon filter and add hot water from a kettle to bring up the temp. It's a lot more tedious than before but it will have to do untill i come up with a better way.

Hi Platty.
Sorry about your fish loss. What is you kh and nitrate at the moment.
A kh of 1 or less can and wil crash. Nitrate is nitric acid and in even a medium range will start to lower your ph.
bread soda is good for highering your kh but it will also raise your ph.
Experiment in a bucket of tank by adding bs at different and see what readings you get.

Not quite a koi pond but the same principle in aquariums too
Over the last decade I have investigated the Koi keepers nightmares, the water quality of Irish water & its effect on my prize Koi. Having fallen into the trap of Ulcer disease I have successfully eradicated it from my pond. This will probably be the greatest achievement in my life as I fell upon the solution quite stupidly.

Having lived in Ireland for the latter years of my life I extended my hobby from England to here in quite a substantial manner. I now sell Koi to people and help them maintain their ponds when required to do so. I have used my forty years of fish keeping helping others to help themselves in their environment and I still maintain my love of the subject without adding the sales technique that I have acquired as well.
I maintain being a good Koi keeper is deriving the information from books writings of better men than me and combining them with the knowledge I have gained over the period to become somewhat of an expert on the matter.

Now water quality has been one of my first defences in the keeping or ornamental Koi You can regularly see me first thing in the morning & last thing at night out with the test kits & ensuring that any deviance from the normal is taken care of. Having read that the prime killers in fish are ammonia & nitrite, steps have always been taken to neutralize them from the water if they occurred. Mostly they have never appeared unless an almost complete water change was done which killed off the filter and a complete re-cycling had to take place.
At the beginning of the year three and a half years ago I noticed a Koi, which had a bit of mouth rot, part of his mouth was eaten away. So I caught him & swabbed him & put it under the microscope and noticed that flexibacter & saprogenia were both present in the infection. I chose a standard pond treatment to eradicate the problem and it seemed to work quite well. About six weeks later a dead Koi popped up to the surface and about its body were ulcers and they affected the fish underneath so even if I had seen him before I couldn’t tell that they were ill. So in my panic I bought in the big guns with an antibacterial treatment from interpet. Again the disease went into remission & I had no more problems for about three months until one after the other I started getting ulcers that you could see & fish that inevitably were dying. After another two treatments with antibacterial products from other suppliers I sat down & almost admitted defeat. Forty years of knowledge went absolutely nowhere in finding a solution to the problem.
I decided that a complete water change was the answer & couldn’t do any more harm as they were all dying anyway. So I changed the water and introduced salt as a buffer to compensate for peaks in the ammonia and nitrate cycle. I researched the salt & found that a 6% dip was the answer to the ulcers spreading further plus a 3% solution in the complete pond. This held the disease in check and it was very traumatic catching the fish bagging & dipping them every two or three days but eventually I decided that this was not getting me any further with the solution.

I paid a visit to my father back in England & all the Koi I had left with him when I moved here were alive & well and had not experienced any problems whatsoever
So I decided that if the water quality over there was different to here I could help to solve the problem. Dutifully I filled two lemonade bottles from the water took them back with me for testing.

The results were almost identical except that the pH was different by 0.3% mine was 8.5 and his was 8.2. I both cases nitrate was non-existent as I had always maintained an eco system was best in any pond and both were well planted with the effect of zero nitrate.

Well I then turned back to my research notes from when I started the pond and I noticed that in all the records that I kept had only a slight variation in pH when cycling the filters at the beginning of each year and for some reason the pH had risen afterwards by the 0.3% So I tested the pH four times a day & noted all the temperatures as well. I decided to investigate the pH syndrome to see if that had any answers. I discovered the following information from a website relating to carbon dioxide/bicarbonate/carbonate buffering system (a hold down for pH variation)

I introduced calcium carbonate into the pond gradually over a period of three weeks and together with the salt baths the ulcerations cleared up and the fish gradually recovered and re-grew skin where the ulcers were.

I had succeeded to eradicate the problem from the pond, but now, when testing I also
Test for salt solution & water hardness in the form of calcium carbonate per mg/litre & maintain this as one of my routine chores.

In conclusion I established that the Irish water runs off from granite rocks & very little calcium carbonate is present. Where as the English water in Sussex runs from chalk rocks with lots of calcium carbonate naturally present in it. This has the effect or reducing pH in the early to late afternoon sun the technical way of putting it is that
The carbonic acid dissociates to form bicarbonate & hydrogen ions The hydrogen ions produced the acidic forming ions & counteract the high pH and if pH begins to fall then the process is reversed, much the same as in a kettle or a washing machine and a product called Calgon works on the same lines by dissolving the calcium & diluting it back into the water.
I also found out that a block of plaster of Paris about a pound for every 1000gallons has a similar buffering effect on the water, whereas I thought that plaster had an adverse effect on the water quality & up until then had used a peat to bring down pH.

Just goes to show that no matter how long you are in this game you never stop learning the story, so that’s why I am telling you the tale, you never know it may be the answer to your problems too.
www.fishkeepingsupplies.com

Here is a bit of a head scratcher.
Yesterday the ph in one of my tanks was 7.2 and today it was 4.8(panic).
I hadent changed anything in the tank or added anything new.
The ph meter is workink fine and i'm slowly getting the ph back on track.
Luckily there was no deth's but i would still like to know what caused the ph crash. Any suggestions? :shock:

High nitrates will cause your ph to crash. Nitrate is nitric acid and will eat in to your kh. If your kh drops to 1 or less your ph will start to crash.

On Boroughmals experience with Koi I have to dissagree with you that increasing your carbonate hardness cured the fish. You never mentiond how you added your fish. Did you quarantine them, were they added all together.
I know you said your fish had ulcers but you also siad they had Saproneglia who`s full name is Saproneglia Chilodenalla.
Chilodenella(saddle back disease) usually does not get cleared up at once.
IME koi and discus both tend to suffer more easily to Chilodenella than most other cichlids and fish.
The so called diascus plague Chilodenella/Tricodena and Costia are probably the largest parasite killer of Koi too.
Salt bathing has some results but usually the weak fish fish die within a week and it does come back. It can and does return. If you get past the 3 months stage the chances are it will not return but not 100%.
Add new fish to this system and they will probablly get sick too. Especially if they have never had any contact with the parasties before.

Back to the carbonate hardness. A high Kh and low oxygen levels (Redox)
Causes fish to be more adhesive to parasites.
More oxygen and a stronger filthratin helps a lot.

Saltbathing and moving fish to other tanks is v good too. PP (Potassium Permanganate) the other tank or pond. I would never PP a system with fish with open wounds.
It can then be neutralised by adding Hydrogen peroxide.

These parasites apparently die within half an hour if they dont have a host so a spare tank treated with anti parasite works well.

I love to test my knowledge against an idiot like you
You know nothing.
Now I would not say that had you not missed the point!!
return to the story dont get drunk & takl sense & I am prepared to listen to any side of any stroy that U can offer

I love to test my knowledge against an idiot like you
You know nothing.
Now I would not say that had you not missed the point!!
return to the story dont get drunk & takl sense & I am prepared to listen to any side of any stroy that U can offer

How far up your own arse can you fit your head after 40 years.
It must be sad knowing that you wasted 40 years of your life learning fewk all. This is a friendly forum where members give and recieve information. I don`t know who you think you are, calling me an idiot but we don`t take this type of carry from members.What I did was disagree with you on one part of your story and I stated facts.
Not the bull you were on about.
As in testing your knowlede, all you did was drag out a story about buffering water with plaster of Paris. I am sure you do have a lot to offer here but you will have to mend your ways. Maybe you came home from the pub yourself and decided to read replies to your posts.
I am sure you have a wealth of knowledge on Koi(noy my expertise) but I have enough knowledge of fish keeping to hold my own against almost anybody.
I don`t want to ban you because we are all big boys and girls here and we could argue all night but other members especially beginners would be a lot more sensitive than me and might take offence to being called an idiot.

If you look under my name you will see the words ADMINISTRATOR and I have the power to delete posts and BAN members who are acting the mick.
Keep your powder dry, as the saying goes.

You have my apologies perhaps it was a little harsh and I dont fancy the up yur xxxx job

Perhaps it was that you completely missed my point of what cured the fish.
It was the fact that the ph stabilised at the 8.2 mark and it was p.H that was the only diffrence in healthy koi & sick koi.
The second point is that it is saprogenia which is a bacteria and not what you said.
Your topic was what caused the p.h to be so volatile and the answer was that the calcium carbonate used as a buffer was the answer and could possibly be applied to this situation to make it
The bacteria present in the volatile water also multiplied very rapidly & the stabilising of the pH helped to reduce bad bacteria also.
Regards

The second point is that it is saprogenia which is a bacteria and not what you said.
Your topic was what caused the p.h to be so volatile and the answer was that the calcium carbonate used as a buffer was the answer and could possibly be applied to this situation to make it
The bacteria present in the volatile water also multiplied very rapidly & the stabilising of the pH helped to reduce bad bacteria also.
Regards

They are protazoan parasitess, anything that lives on or off an organism and causes it harm is a parasite.If you want anything to kill Costia or Chilodenella you can get anti parasite by Interpet. Believe me I had enough of external bacterium to last me a life time.
Any way what I was saying is that if you higher your kh and your OPR levels are low you fish will become more adhesive to external bacteriums.
Way too late to start recking the brain about redox levels.
The same with your mouth fungus. Most anti fungus remedies are really anti bacterial agents. In fairness I believe you know that.
May be I missed the point of your story. On the 40 years experience in fish keeping, There was a guy on another forum and he sang from the same hymm sheet. 40 years experience and he knew fewk all.In the end he got slated by myself and other members on different forums and eventually he left. Another forum I moderate on he just left because he recognised me.

Its not good blowing your own trumpet.
So............
Lets let by gones be by gones.
On the 40 years up your own **** I am not going to let anybody call me an idiot so I went on the offensive. Hopefully all in the past.

Its best to use I.M.E or I.M.O. That way less arguments start.

PEACE MAN.

Peace man.

Salt at low levels also will discourage the growth of saprogenia or common water mould.
regards