good morning.

Yesterday i checked my water and all was pretty ok apart from ph
i read that it is advised to aim for 7 - 7.5 and mine was 8
as phlvls are on a logaritmic scale that means it is 50 times to high if the aim would be 7.5

is this a big deal? as in does it REALLY needs to drop? or is it possible to keep 'm in that too.
If yes, are there any ways to do it without products? with wood or i dont know what?

then my nitrate... my nitrite was 0
my nitrate was just massive. might be cuz i had to change filters after a leaking tetratec and everything is not settled yet again. i already changed 1/2 of the water and will do every 3 days 1/3th after this.
Could this be just due the new filter? or is it just due too the lack of plants.
any ideas apart from carrieng out water changes to solve this?

( oh , there are no fish in it yet apart from a 20cm pleco, and 2 ancistrus )

edit:
other measurements were
GH 14
KH 5
co2 mg/l: 1.6
oxigen: 87%

i will have to go to the lfs to fix some ammonia measuring as i dont have that myself.

I am by no means an expert, but my guess would be that your tap water is exceptionally hard, or high in PH. And changeing the water as much as you are to correct one problem may be creating another for you. I am sure someone with way more knowledge will jump in here soon.

Sam

your spot on Sam with the PH. 7-7.5 is ideal but a steady PH of 8 would be far better than you trying to maintain a PH of 7. don't bother to try an change it. hight nitrates mean more water changes,bigger tank or less fish. is the tank fully cycled.?

pH is indeed measured in a logarithmic scale. So if 7.0 is taken as reference, 8.0 is at 10e(+1), 9.0 is 10e(+2), 10.0 is 10e(+3) while 6.0 is at 10e(-1), 5.0 at 10e(-2)... etc.

Anchored in the middle point of 7.0 it means that a pH of 8.0 is 10 times higher than 7.0 while a pH 6.0 is ten times lower. The exponential jump comes as we move up or down out of our reference range (6.0 to 8.0) since a pH of 9.0 is 100 times higher than pH 7.0 and a pH of 5.0 is 100 times lower. And so it goes, a pH of 4.0 is 1000 times lower than pH 7.0 while pH 10 is 1000 times higher than pH 7.0, and so till the end of the scale.

This is why variations within our reference range are not that hard to handle, as we do when acclimating fish.

Pepe
Santo Domingo

Hey man if you say so, That went a little over my head. (LOL) After looking at what you wrote for a minute, I now understand that the scale is based on 10s. So there is more of a leap on the chart than I had expected.

Thanks Sam that went over my head too...

pepetj wrote:



excellent explanation on the meaning of ph numbers pepe

alot going over heads here

at whoever asked if the tank was cycled. Its running for a week now. was 50% tanganyika 50% new water. tested everyday since i posted. and changed water twice. everything stays steady on there mark

gh 11 - 12
kh 6
ph 7.5
nitrite 0
nitrate: 12 mg / l

i hope i can keep it this way with changing 1/4th of water every 3th day.
if i can maintain this for another week or 2, then my new eheim will be working more efficient too, then i'll probably get the oscars.

another question

the reason not to put plants in the tank is
-they unroot them?
- or they eat them.

cause if they just unroot 'm i can do floating plants to suck up a bit of nitrate.

thx for the help so far

They uproot them. But that is not to say it will happen with every oscar. I have heard of people keeping oscars in planted tanks. I have plants in my tank right now and havent had a problem. Then again, my oscar is only about 1.5 inches.