my aquarium ph level will not stay the same?

Question

as soon as i put in ph down 30 min later is goes back to alkaline. what is the problem?

its a fresh water tank with brown and white gravel.

dont worry, im not getting my fish til tonight.

i left my tank on since 7 days ago.

i re did my tank cuz all my old fish died so i bought new gravel and stuff and mixed it with SOME of the old gravel

how do i make my high carbonate go down? because i dont have fish yet im fine with putting the stuff in. i have liquid ph down from aquariumpharm and i have a 30 gallon tank with 2 drops every us gallon

Answer 1

You have high alkalinity aka Carbonate hardness aka KH. Each time you try to lower it, the buffering ability of the hardness pushes it back up. Depending on how high that carbonate hardness actually is, it could take days and days and an entire bottle of pH down to get it to stay low. In the mean time as you try to adjust it, your poor fosh are on a rolelrcoaster ride of pH getting more and more stressed out at every change. Any change of pH is stressful for them and that kind of constant change is horrible for their health.

Unless you are keeping very, very delicate fish, or your pH is somewhere above 8.5 or so, you really should just leave it where it is and not try to adjust it at all. It's a pain for you, a pain everytime you do a water change and really rough on the fish. I promise you you will kill more fish trying to adjust the pH then you would lose to a really, really bad pH. 99% of the time, the pH out of the tap is fine for almost any adquarium fish.

MM

Answer 2

You have found out why it is better off to not mess with the pH of a tank.

Your tank is buffering the pH down and trying to return the pH to the level the tank will support.

There is almost no reason to change the pH of a tank. Virtually all fish will do fine in a wide variety of pH and in fact the vast majority of fish in petstores have never been in water parameters that match their native environment.

It is far better for fish to be in a stable pH than the "correct" pH.

Answer 3

pH down will not work with hard water. i would leave it alone unless its really really off. if you want to change it do every other water change with RO water that will give you halfway between 7 and what you have now as a basic rule of thumb, but i wouldnt worry about ti to much, wetwebmedia.com has info on the subject.

Answer 4

what type of gravel are u using. also it might be your tap water.

if your using substrate like crushed coral or sand, your ph may be high for a few months.

Answer 5

Is it a freshwater tank?