Hello all,
Has anyone noticed the PH dropping after using one of these types of sponges? I am asking because my tanks pH has been very stable only ranging from 8.1 to 7.8 with the higher reading in the later afternoon. I used a version of this type of sponge I bought from
BRS called Nano Sparkly Sponge On A Stick made by Hydra Aquatics yesterday around 12:45PM. I only used it to clean the underside of the filter sock holder in my sump where I have not been able to reach very well. It had a little build up, but nothing that would cause any alarms. The sponge stayed intact minus a little bit of the size from use. After I was complete and cleaned up my mess I logged into the Apex fusion app just to take a look at the readings. The pH seems to have dropped a little as it usually does after some cleaning, but it never stopped falling. it dropped down to 7.4 right around the normal hour of it being at the high point over over 8. At this point I felt I needed to prevent it from dropping any further so I hung a very slow drip of buffer just to keep the pH from dropping anymore. That seemed to stop the falling of the pH late last night, and I expected to see things start to turn around during the day today because I have had my carbon reactor running since yesterday in the event some type of contaminant had leached. Today Monday the PH falling had stopped, but it is still lower than normal. Here are my test results from my RedSea test kit.
ammonia - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 8.5 (Hannah HR)
pH - 7.7
dKH - 9 (usually I try to keep it at 8 but the buffer bumped it up a little)
I am not saying using the sponge was the cause of this, but it is the only thing that I have done different and noticed any type of change. I test my water every few days and have a AWC that changes out 2 gal of water/day and I keep a close eye on the levels in the holding tank.
Salt I am using is HW Marine mix with water salinity of 1.025 which I add 3 grams of soda ash to get the alkalinity to 8.5.
any suggestions would be appreciated.
