How to Raise pH?

[baseballfanatic2]

How do you raise pH in a tank without altering alk?
My Alk is 10 and Cal is 460, pH is 7.8 and I want the pH to be at 8.5 for a few days. Any advice on what to add to tank to raise it?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Why do you want to raise it that high? Dinos?

There is no way to raise the pH without raising the alkalinity except by drawing CO2 out of the water.

You can do that by aerating the tank with air that has normal (or less than normal) levels of CO2, or by having photosynthetic organisms in the tank consume it.

At your alkalinity, you'd need less than normal Co2 levels to attain pH 8.5.

 

[baseballfanatic2]

Why do you want to raise it that high? Dinos?

There is no way to raise the pH without raising the alkalinity except by drawing CO2 out of the water.

You can do that by aerating the tank with air that has normal (or less than normal) levels of CO2, or by having photosynthetic organisms in the tank consume it.

At your alkalinity, you'd need less than normal Co2 levels to attain pH 8.5.

Yeah my gfs tank broke out in dinos from not dipping her corals. Tried the 3 day blackout, h202, nothing works. Now want to try pH. Running out of options, and would hate to scrap the tank.

 

[baseballfanatic2]

What do you think about using seachem marine buffer to bring the pH up to 8.3 or is that not high enough? I feel that more and more people are coming into contact with dinos lately and nobody has yet to find a real cure. This plague is the devil I tell you.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

What do you think about using seachem marine buffer to bring the pH up to 8.3 or is that not high enough? I feel that more and more people are coming into contact with dinos lately and nobody has yet to find a real cure. This plague is the devil I tell you.

That would be among the poorer choices. Limewater (kalkwasser) has by far the biggest pH rise per unit of alkalinity. Pure sodium carbonate is about half as much, and any buffer will be lower than that, not matter what they erroneously claim.

What happened when you used hydrogen peroxide, and how much did you use?

 

[baseballfanatic2]

That would be among the poorer choices. Limewater (kalkwasser) has by far the biggest pH rise per unit of alkalinity. Pure sodium carbonate is about half as much, and any buffer will be lower than that, not matter what they erroneously claim.

What happened when you used hydrogen peroxide, and how much did you use?

Used 1ml per 10 gallons for 5 days. Blood shrimps attenae looked like they got thrown into an electric socket so I stopped after 5th day. No reduction in dinos or affect on fish or corals, only the shrimp. Dosed at night also.

I was on YouTube trying to see if anyone has any science vids on organisms eating dinos and I came across this.

New predator maybe?

Soratid Foraminifer



I saw you wrote an article on these organisms, so you might have better knowledge on them. Can't tell if they are eating dinos or becoming the host for them. What's your opinion?

 

[baseballfanatic2]

Nvm you didn't write it. Sorry. Got mixed up

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

My only dinos article was on pH raising to deal with them, and why it might work.

Problem Dinoflagellates and pH by Randy Holmes-Farley - Reefkeeping.com
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php

 

[toaster77]

As alluded to above, fresh air (e.g., by opening the windows) can certainly help for raising pH. One probably has noticed that whenever you have lot of people over for an extended period of time, the pH of your tank water can drop quite a bit due to all the exhaled CO2 by all the persons.

 

[rygh]

People have had some luck with CO2 scrubbers.
Basically put a gatorade bottle full of soda lime on the input of your skimmer.

 

[jsker]

Drilled a hole in my wall and ran the line out to the exterior of the house and Bam the Ph went up of 8.2, Also so started using a different ph test kit.