Now i am using "proper ph 7.0 " by aquarium pharm. It buffers the water at ph 7.0 and kh 89 ppm..any body use this? after using this my goldies are alot more active. before the kh was at 35 ppm. I did water changes but it would never raise. what do you think of this product?

I my self have never played around with my Ph. Since you have to be very careful that it doesnt drop. If it goes even out of wake of .5 ppms you will see signs of stress

ARe you trying to raise your kH? Or are you also trying to lower/raise your pH? I have always considered a pH of 7.0 a borderline pH, for if it goes much below 7.0 bad things can happen very very quickly. A unexpected pH drop is a far more common thing than a pH that goes up, for lots of things can precipitously drop a pH.

Plain old baking soda does it for me. I start at 7.0 in RO water, but always bring it to 7.4-7.8 depending on the tank and the fish. At the same time, the kh is raised, buffering the pH into a stable reading. 35 is rather low for kh, but not too outrageous - I would want more, too, though.

Koko is right, though. I would not mess with pH just for the sake of messing with pH unless you have a real reason. Not having sufficiant buffering to maintain your pH is a good reason, however. Typically, when you add buffering capability, your pH will go up somewhat.

Be carefull with the proper pH products. They don't actually buffer the pH, just raise it. I *thought* that it was a buffer so I was using it (my tap water's acidic) and it killed one of my fish and made the other pretty sick. Without a buffer, the ph can drop immediately after adding proper pH.

I love my Proper PH. I have been using it since I had tropical tanks. It does not raise the ph for me - our tap water is normally close to 9.0, so I use it to bring it down to 7.0. It remains steady all the time, and in almost 4 years, I have never had a problem.

Aqua

Ranchugirl put me on to baking soda for buffering pH and raising the KH. If I understand it correctly you won't get the pH over 8.2 with baking soda but you can continue to add it until the KH is where you want it. From what I've read a pH of 8.2 isn't too high for goldfish and a KH around 150 is desirable. My tap water has a high pH (close to 8) and I am now adding 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to every 5 gallons of change water. Your needs would likely be different and you can determine them by adding small measured amounts of baking soda to a fixed quantity of water and testing pH and KH after each addition. Today my 35 gallon tank had a pH of 7.8 and a KH of 125 after replacing 5 gallons of water and the water I drained out had the same values. The tank is terribly over crowded with goldfish and swordtails but the water is crystal clear and everybody looks happy and has been that way since I started using baking soda a few weeks ago.
Milo

well i started using proper ph 7.0 because it raises kh. i didn't buy it to lower my ph, my ph was 7.5 before i added that stuff. so does baking soda buffer ph, does it buffer kh too? Is it better for the fish than chemicals? in the proper ph package it says that it holds ph at the desired level i thought.

i find in the winter my ph is low and i use ph up. and i love it. im not to shure why in the winter it drops though.

I've found that proper pH doesn't do a thing for keeping a pH constant. I was using proper pH 7.5 and I had several crashes down to 6.8! Right now I'm using baking soda as a buffer and proper pH to actually set the pH (it will raise or lower the pH). You need an actual buffer, baking soda, calcium carbonate, etc, to hold the pH constant.

whats a buffer?

Buffering capacity (also called alkalinity) is the measure of water's ability to absorb acid without dropping in pH. Biological processes - such as decomposing waste matter - create acids, and as these are produced in the aquarium they react with the water's buffering agents and are neutralised so the pH remains constant. If insufficient buffering agents are present however then they quickly become saturated with acid and the pH begins to drop.

Water's main buffering agents are the dissolved salts and minerals which make up water 'hardness', the GH and especially the KH. Hard water, which contains a lot of dissolved minerals and salts, generally has a high buffering capacity and tends to be neutral to alkaline. (My water for instance has a KH over 300 and a pH of 8 - 8.2). Soft water contains far less salts and minerals - i.e. less buffering capacity - and tends to be acid to neutral.

There is a big difference between pH agents and buffering agents. 'pH Up' or 'Proper pH' are pH changing agents: they will make the water more acidic or more alkaline. However, they don't actually buffer the water; you either need a commercial buffering agent or something like baking soda or oyster shell to do that. You need to raise the KH, not the pH, in other words, to hold pH at a steady level if your water lacks hardness.

Two scenarios:

1. The tank has soft acid water but the owner wants it to be neutral to alkaline, so adds pH raising agents. The pH will rise, but in the presence of inadequate buffering capacity (not enough dissolved salts) the metabolic processes in the tank soon produce enough acid to neutralise the agent and drop the pH back down. At the next water change more pH agent is added to boost the pH, so up it goes... and back down again. This rollercoaster ride is highly dangerous to fish.

2. The tank has hard alkaline water but the owner wants it to be soft and acidic (e.g. for rainforest species). So pH lowering agents are added, but because these do nothing to remove the minerals which make the original tap water hard and well-buffered, the agent is quickly neutralised by the water's natural buffering capacity, so the pH dips and rises sharply. The owner adds more and more pH Down to try and stop the pH rising, but because their water already contained a lot of salts, and the neutralisation process produces more salts, they end up with tank water which is chemically not much different from pickling brine, plus a rollercoastering pH level! Bye bye fish.

If you want to bring your pH up to a certain level therefore, you need to make sure the water is well-buffered first (use a commercial buffer or oyster shell / baking soda to add 'hardness'). These products will bring the pH up at the same time as the buffering capacity - remember the harder water is, the more alkaline it tends to be - and will keep it stable.

If you want to bring your pH down to a certain level however, you need to physically remove substances from it, not add more. Peat moss in the filter is one way (it removes some of the dissolved minerals and adds acid) and mixing tap water with RO water or rainwater are others.

Hope this helps.

I started my tank in January and have always had a problem with pH. It has always been in the 6's, though I have not had any bad experiences yet as a result of this. The guy at the pet store is vehemently against the chemical pH adjusting products, so I haven't used any. A couple questions:

1. To raise pH and buffering capacity in a 20-gallon tank, how much baking soda should be used? How long will it take to change pH and buffering capacity? Will I need to keep adding more?

2. I have a few river rocks in my tank. I remembering reading somewhere that this may affect pH in some way. Is that true?

Thanks for your help.

Probably the best way to find out how the baking soda affects your ph/kh is to test them before and after adding a small, measured amount of baking soda. It dissolves and disperses very quickly, so you shouldn't have to wait too long after adding it to test again. Once you have your kh to where you want it, you won't need to add any more baking soda unless you do a water change.

Right now, I am adding 1/8 teaspon baking soda to each gallon of water that I condition with amquel plus. This makes the ph/kh of the new water similar to the tank. My pH has been staying pretty constant at 7.6 since I started doing this.

i've been real lucky. i talked to friend who rus our water company he says water out of the well is 5.6 ph and water is soft. theyajust the water to 7.6 and thats what it is when i do weekly changes out of tap and i check the tank water before i change it and it is 7.6

hello everyone - I just tested the tap water and the kh of the tap was 53 ppm. why is it so low in my tank? (its 35 ppm) what can cause the kh to drop? also some people on here said that they used "proper ph" by aquarium pharm and it didn't buffer the ph. it doesnt work if the water hardness is over 100 ppm!

You and I have the same problem. SOFT water. Goldfish likes hard water.

Emma's post explains the problem well. The dynamics of a fish tank changes constantly. The more fish you have, especially if you're at the capacity load the more unstable the water quality is to maintain.

Back to the soft water. When the water authorities in my district decided to convert from chlorine to chloramine, I had to start treating it with water conditioners like Amquel. That's when the problem started. I had pH crashes you wouldn't believe. It got to the point had to change 50% of the water every day and add "pH Up" just to keep the pH at 6.8. Then Koko and Happy suggested I test the water hardness. Whoa!! The GH was less than 20 and KH was 30. In goes the baking soda.

In a stable cycled tank the calcium carbonates responsible for keeping the pH up is used up by fish and the nitrifying bacteria. Apparently the Amquel also depletes the calcium as well. Therefor the pH will drop. To bring the pH back up, we have to use buffers. They make buffers of all kind for whatever pH you want to maintain at. If you try to buffer hard water to a pH other than what it is naturally, you may have a hard time at it.

Buffers add calcium carbonates to the water and bring back the pH stability. In very hard water, it is more difficult to change the pH because the carbonates are trying to keep it steady. There is an equilibrium point your tank will reach. You want that point to be compatible with you fish. Keeping it in equilibrium is the work we do as aquarist.

Fish don't like fluctuations in pH. As a matter of fact, water buffer manufacturer recommend not to change pH by more than 0.2 per 24 hours. A pH that is out of range is way better than a fluctuating pH.

As for how much buffer to use? It depends. Each tank will be different. One article I found in Goldfish Connections helped me. (How to buffer)

For all the people with soft water we have a little bit of a problem. For those that have hard water, consider yourselves blessed. Well, maybe...laundry and bathroom cleaning chores are tougher.

I have a question. To combat the soft water one fishkeeper at a pet store suggest I use marine gravel. He says saltwater aquarist use it to keep their pH stable that way. He also suggest to put crushed corel in my gravel or filter. Anybody under stand what is the physics or chemistry behind this?

I just mixed in half a cup of crushed corel in my canister filter and noticed no difference in pH.