Ph drop after feeding frozen artemia

[Ghxst]

Hi! I just fed my Corals and noticed a ph drop of 0.11 from 8.3 to 8.19. Is that to be expected from frozen foods? My other dry foods don't cause the drop and I couldn't find anything online. All I can come up with is that the food maybe old and the nitrate is causing the drop.
Thanks!

 

[Diesel]

I never heard or experience that as the ice part is such a small amount.
With a piece of dry ice you can visually see the Ph drop.
What size tank you have?
Did you see any effects on your skimmer?

 

[Ghxst]

Doh, I need to clarify! It was frozen food but completely defrosted by a couple of hours before feeding. I'm attaching my apex log. Thank you for asking. And a 34g RSM, skimmer no issue. I have also never seen this happen and don't know if the food was bad or the Red Sea amminos did it.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

That may be a one time coincidence. I'd watch in the future.

If the food had something acidic in it, the pH drop would be instantaneous (or as fast as it mixes in).

As foods are metabolized by organisms over a period of hours, CO2 is produced that will tend to lower pH. That is true of any food.

 

[Diesel]

If you still have more of it I would test it again.
Feed your tank another round and see if PH will drop again.
As Randy mentioned that the PH can drop with frozen food but not really noticeable.
My Daughter once as I instructed her to drop one cube of frozen Mysis in the sump as it will defrost and the return pump push it in the tank.
Well she dropped the whole package as she thought it was one.
When I went back into history on my apex showed that the PH had a drop from 8.24 to 8.21 in 5 min.
Nothing to worried about but the amount of frozen food all in once did made the skimmer go nuts.

 

[Ghxst]

Thank you Randy and Diesel! Yeah my ph has been funky since I fed, I will update on how it rebounds!

 

[Diesel]

Thank you Randy and Diesel! Yeah my ph has been funky since I fed, I will update on how it rebounds!

Is it still acting up?
If so you might do some test,
ALK
CAL
MAG.
NSW
TEMP
Po4

 

[Ghxst]

I'll test up now. It's more fun with a magnetic stirrer

 

[Ghxst]

My brand new Red Sea Ca test has precip in it. I'll use my other one just incase I need to return it

 

[Ghxst]

Fuuuuuudgggee! I found 2 potential culprits. A friend traded me a urchin and although it was grazing died. My Nitrates and phosphates are reading non detect on the API kits, I don't trust that. The water stinks like dead urchin. DKH 8.4, Ca 750 and magnesium 2000 all using salifert and I had to use extra reagent on the last two.

I'll do a water change. Looks like I have a bit more to dial in on the new doser.

 

[Ghxst]

WC helped but still not great. Red Sea really packs some alkalinity and other trace.
You can see the spike in ph after the WC change.

 

[Ghxst]

That may be a one time coincidence. I'd watch in the future.

If the food had something acidic in it, the pH drop would be instantaneous (or as fast as it mixes in).

As foods are metabolized by organisms over a period of hours, CO2 is produced that will tend to lower pH. That is true of any food.

I am getting instant ph drops from any foods I add. Amino acids are added to all my foods so I am thinking acro power is the cause?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Which amino acid product? It might be formulated to be acidic for preservation.

 

[Ghxst]

Acro power by 2 lil fishes

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Can you describe what you mean by instant pH drops? I don't see such drops in the graphs.

 

[Ghxst]

I suppose they look more sudden on the day graph than a week lol.

The first black line points to the feeding time. They each have a drop in pH about 0 .2 The second is the next day and I fed a small amount after to see if the ph dips and it dips much less.

Looking at it now, I may be misunderstanding the amount of metabolism that is occurring in a small tank.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

The effect on pH of an acidic additive happens in seconds.

It looks like the effect you see is happening over hours, which could be:

1. photosynthesis stopping due to main lights off (if that happened around that time) and subsequent CO2 entering from the air
2. normal respiration after the main lights go off (if they did) producing CO2
3. metabolism of the food to produce CO2

 

[Ghxst]

Thank you! I will track lighting next so I can answer the above question. I guess I was just surprised to see the ph start to lower as soon as I fed, I thought the metabolism would take a few hours to kick in.

 

[Ghxst]

The normal drop happens at the lights off time. That's all good. The pre drop happens after I feed and I tried 3 different foods. Acro power by itself does not cause a drop in ph. Guess it's just metabolism and I never noticed because I used to feed after lights went out.


Thanks for your help and clarifying the process!

 

[jason2459]

I'm not sure what the pH problems are in this thread. I see none. All pH values shown so far are perfectly fine and cause of no concern.