The ph in my tank will not go up.?

Question

The ph in my tank will not go up its at 6 i want it higher and no matter what i do it will not go up and ther is nothing in my tank no wood just gravle. why

Answer 1

I'm with Zoe, use the baking soda but do be careful to allow it to adjust for a few hours after treating it to see what the long term effects will be. pH can and often does "bounce" when adjusted. It will read as if you have gotten the results you want but within a few hours change.

MM

Answer 2

check the PH of your source water (tap water if you do your water changes from the sink or tub) You probably just have too much waste in your tank. Adding sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to your tank should increase the PH, 1 teaspoon per 20 gallons shold be sufficient. Also adding limestone rocks or aragonite or dolomite sand or gravel will help to buffer the PH to a higher level. Adding the rock/sand/gravel is pretty safe and will slowly raise the PH. Adding baking soda will increase the PH rapidly and may harm your fish. A good way to increase it would be to do a 20% water change with the baking soda in the new water (if you have a 20 gallon tank, a 4 gallon water change with 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda). Do this every day for a week and it will raise it slowly. Good luck.

PS more information would be helpful. A low PH is usually due to a buildup of acids that result from fish waste. How long have you had the tank? How often do you change water? How much water do you change when you do it? What kind of fish and how many do you have?

Answer 3

What have you tried to do to make it go up?
Have you tried baking soda? If not, definitely try it. Or if you have, try more of it. It's guaranteed to bring up your pH AND your KH (which will ensure that your pH stays high). Start with one teaspoon per 10 gallons and add more if you need to.

You can also add crushed coral or crushed shells to your gravel or inside your power filter. Or you can use pieces of texas holey rock or dead coral as decor. These methods won't increase your pH immediately, but they will help keep pH, GH and KH high.

Those methods should definitely work.

Answer 4

This is going to sound dumb but what kind of gravel do you have? Believe it or not certain types of gravel will keep your ph from increasing or increase it too much.

The property of water to resist changes in pH is known as buffering capacity. You can determine the capacity of your buffering system by measuring total hardness. A reading of 4-6 dH or higher is usually adequate to keep the buffering system in place and maintain a stable pH. A reading under 4 dH means there isn't enough of a buffering system and the pH is likely to drop. For higher pH levels, you will probably want to aim for 6-12 dH. Many hobbyists choose to measure only Carbonate Hardness (KH), which is a measure of the calcium carbonates in your water. This test is also effective in maintaining a proper buffer system. When testing for Carbonate Hardness, a reading of 75-100 mg/L is adequate for most aquariums, while a reading of 100-200 mg/L would be desired for higher pH levels. For the purpose of freshwater aquariums, measuring either total hardness or carbonate hardness is necessary, but measuring both independently would not be needed.

You need to know that anywhere in your aquarium where detritus (a fancy term for dirt) accumulates is a source of Phosphate production. As detritus accumulates in your gravel bed and on your filter pads, the Phosphate levels in your aquarium rise. Free Phosphate ions may bond with calcareous buffering material, precipitating calcium from your aquarium, and reducing your aquariums ability to keep pH stable. This is why it is so very important to clean your filter pads regularly and vacuum the aquarium gravel with each water change. In addition, your tap water contains buffering ions. Doing regular partial water changes will help to replenish the buffers which have been lost. This is important in all aquariums, because fish respiration and organic wastes alone will cause a gradual drop in the ability of your aquarium to buffer against pH swings.

Now the question becomes what to do if the fish you want to keep have very special pH requirements. If your fish prefer a pH level which is reasonably close to the pH your aquarium water is naturally buffered to, then I do not recommend you make any changes at all. Unless you are keeping an extremely specialized fish your fish will be fine. On the other hand, if your fish have pH requirements which are far from the values in your tank, then you have work to do.

Let us consider methods of raising the pH of your tap water. There are many additives on the market today which claim to raise your pH. Most of the liquid products on the market today are a 50/50 success at best when used alone only to find the ph will soon return to the normal level of 6. You also need to use a product to increase the buffering ability of your aquarium. To maintain a stable pH in the upper levels of the pH scale for fishkeeping, I would recommend using a buffering substrate such as crushed coral. You can add crushed coral to your existing aquarium. You can place larger amounts of shells or chrushed coral beneath the substraight in the tank. I personally place the crushed coral in a mesh bag and place the bag in my filter. You will want about 1 kg of crushed coral per 40 liters of water to buffer the water to hold a pH around 7.6. This method does not allow for the use of large quantities of crushed coral, but can be effective if you only need to make small adjustments to your aquariums buffering ability. This is why ocean items such as shells and ocean sand should not be used in a fresh water aquarium. It does raise the PH level.

Be assured that attempting to control pH is the most frustrating experience for a fish hobbyist. I would guess that 50% of the problems encountered in new aquariums are a result of the aquarist attempting to change the pH level. Few fish keepers actually need to adjust their pH. For the majority of aquarists your tap water pH will be adequate. The dangers of adjusting the pH incorrectly far outweigh any benefit you may receive by moving your pH a few points on the scale.

Remember, when it comes to adjusting your pH, less is more! Stability is most important. Routine maintenance is the key to keeping your pH stable and your fish healthy!

Also, do not use baking soda in your tank. Over doing the ph plus adding additional salt is not going to do your tank any good. It will also revert back to 6 when the carbon filters pull the Soda out.
Hope this helps

Answer 5

Acidic water often means high levels of decomposing waste. Clean your tank more often and it will gradually rise.
Urine has a pH of about 5.5. Basically it sounds like your fish are swimming in urine.

Answer 6

Use this salt recipe to achieve the desired parameters you are looking for. If you have been using those 'instant' chemicals at the pets store I'm not surprised they haven't worked - they rarely do.

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/buffer_recipe.php

The recommended doses are for African cichlids, if you don't want to push it that high, just follow the same recipe but use less of it.