Is the test for alkalinity useful for anything else except for PH? Currently, I am using Acid BUffer and it lowers alkalinity while lowering the PH. I am not experiencing any PH swings, it is actually staying high. So, I just wanted to know if Alkalinity affects the goldfish directly.

I tried searching, but most people talk about high KH (alkalinity).

Thanks!

KH is a measure of carbonate hardness and is basically a measure of your water's buffering capacity. If your KH is high, your pH is generally more stable.

pH under 7 is acid, over 7 is alkaline.

KH doesn't bother fish, but it does help nitrifying bacteria and plants.

GH is a measure of the dissolved salts (calcium and magnesium mainly) it is GH that will affect your fish.

Different fish have evolved to suit different GH and pH. Unless yours is completely unsuitable for goldfish, then it would be a good idea to leave it alone. Unless you get a professional to tell you how to keep it under control, you may either add a lot of chemical and have no effect on the water or create swings.

What is your pH, KH and GH, and why do you need to add acid buffer?

I try to keep PH around 7.0-7.5. But, it keeps going up.
KH is around 60.
GH is 300 or more (might be off the scale)

I need to add acid buffer because it is the only thing that lowers the PH. Nothing else works. I tried a whole bottle of PH down (little bottle) and it didn't move the PH at all.

So, how are these parameters?

I'm not a parameter expert. I hope one comes along soon.

I just have soft water with low KH and rising pH. And everything I try hasn't worked. But I have been worrying about it for the bettas (acidic, softwater fish). The goldfish seem to cope with much higher pH. Even with the bettas I can keep it under 8 just with waterchanges and they don't mind.

Where does the pH stop going up when it goes up? Eventually it must halt when it reaches a natural buffer. Maybe that won't be too bad for your goldfish. Are they fancy?

The pH down might not work because of the low KH and then if you don't add a buffer that interacts with the type of acid you add, you will also just be wasting your time and money. I've done that.

great summary yabbie.

henryay: That is pretty hard. and your current KH is about as low as I'd let it go. So what's your pH and KH before you mess with it? Can you get ahold of your city's annual water quality report? Or you could call then and get numbers for GH.

yabbie: how soft?
The calcium in the water helps to stabilize pH. You might try increasing hardness with calcium chloride and epsom salt (magnesium sulfate).

Yabbie is correct about what kH and buffers do with your water! Without getting deeper into the actual chemistry that is involved, the alkalinity will stabilize your pH - the more buffer, the more stable the pH is.

If you are adding pH down and it is not affecting it, it is because you have way too much buffer for a small amount to work. The best way of describing buffer I have found is a car's shocks. The buffer of the water is like a shock on a car - if it is a good shock, when you push down or pull up on the car, it will go back into position with little or no bounce. If you have bad shocks or poor shocks, when you push down or pull up, the car will bounce up and down and up and down. The buffer does this for the pH. Having adequate buffer will make sure that when the pH is pushed up or down, it is immediately brought back to the original level. You have good enough "shocks" in your water that no matter how hard you push up or down, your buffer will still bring your pH back to where it was originally.

Goldfish can live and thrive in a very wide range of pH - they are actually more forgiving of a higher pH than a lower pH in many cases. The most important thing is consistancy. As long as the pH remains stable, the fish will adjust and do just fine. A constantly changing pH or a pH that bounces is one of the worse, most stressful things you can do in a tank.

You state that you have a gH of over 300, and a kH of 60 or so. Is that after the acid buffer addition? What is your pH before the acid buffer?

I have well water that has a gH of 300+ and a pH of well over 10+. It is amazingly horrid stuff. I used to use RO water for all my fish. But RO water, or water that has been filtered using reverse osmosis, removed nearly all the mineral content in the water, puts the pH at exactly 7.0, also has a kH of zero. It has no buffer at all. The fish need some minerals, and I had to have a buffer, so I found myself adding all kinds of stuff back into the water to "build" it into quality water. It was ridiculous. Instead, I now use a measure of well water with the RO water - the well water adds the minerals and the buffer, and the RO takes the pH down to a reasonable level. I usually run about 7.8 pH.

There are a few things that are better in lower pH - cycling a tank is easier on the fish in lower pH, colors can be affected occasionally by pH, but in general, a steady pH - even a higher one can be just fine.

You can use a combination of RO water (commonly found in grocery store water dispensers or easy to create yourself with a home plumbed RO filter - I have one plumbed into the kitchen sink with a 25 gallon tank in the basement) and your water. Test the water and add it in combination until you get the levels of all the parameters you are looking for. pH does not have to be 7.0-7.5. It can be 8.0 or 8.5 also.

My tanks are confusing. I'm cycling two betta tanks at the moment and I decided not to fool with pH or KH until they're finished.

But the tank that is giving me problems has been cycling for a month. It has a KH of 30 a GH of 60 and a pH that is at about 7.7 today. It seems to be dropping as it settles down. It's a 2 ft tank with quite a few plants (used to have gravel but I took it out in case that was affecting the pH... altho it wasn't affecting the GH or KH) and filtered by two corner box filters that have been cycling in another tank for three weeks before being used in this tank.

I tried using bicarb of soda as a buffer and then added two kinds of acid... but the pH rose and I decided it was obviously something that needed more investigation and I should wait until the tank settled down. The KH and GH just keep springing back to 30 and 60 as if they're on a bungy.

I'm cycling up another tank... same water out of the tap: soft and pH 7.2 and that tank has a pH of 7.2, GH 40, KH 20(!). This is a 1ft x 4ft tank with a built in sump area and only java moss.

I never adjust the goldfish tank and they're very happy. They have plants in their tank too and their pH is 7-7.2.