Importance of PH during cycleing...

drab911

Hey everyone...
I am in day 3 of my cycleing process... and my PH has dropped from about 6.5 to 5 and my amonia has only risen slightly it is now at .1
Do I need to raise my PH to continue the process or is it not really an issue until the amonia gets really high.
Also my water has a little bit of a foul smell now.. is this the smell of the amonia growing?? THanks a lot...

Petz8888 · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 7:42 pm Post subject:

HI!

I dont think you need to raise the Ph unless it is acidic.

The smell is most likely the smell of *( friendly)* bactiria growing in your filter .

Dpnt listen to me inless no one else says other wise though.

Im not so sure about that stuff.

BYE!

Petz Smile

drab911 · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 8:01 pm Post subject:

But if my PH is lower then that would mean that it is acidicy... cause high is the alkaline or whaterver right?
Anyways on the bottle of PH UP it says that low PH kills your biological filter so I raised it upa little bit

t_chelle16 · Moderator Joined: 22 Mar 2004 Posts: 3436

pH isn't my strong suit, but if you do try to raise it, I wouldn't use chemicals. They tend to cause way too many fluctuations which will be bad when you eventually get fish in there. You could try something like crushed coral, but before doing that it would be best to first try to determine why it's droping in the first place.

Do you have any driftwood in the tank?

-Chelle

kc5gvn · Moderator Joined: 15 Mar 2004 Posts: 1147

Hi drab911, When you are cycling a tank remember that everything is in flux. After it has cycled everything will stabalize including the PH. Generally if your tap water registers 6.5 it will most likely stable out about 6.0 once it has finished cycling. Don't worry about PH during cycling. In doing a fishless cycle I wouldn't recommend putting anything organic like driftwood in the tank. It creates too many variables that can pose a problem.

After the tank has cycled I strongly discourage using any chemicals to raise or lower the PH. They just create more problems of PH swings throwing your fish into PH shock and can mask other problems you may have in the tank, such as decaying organic matter. There are other things that can be done to take care of low or high PH that are more stable and cause less problems. These include using PH buffers that are more stable, or adding a small bag of peat moss to your filtration system to make the water softer and more acidic, or adding a small bag of dolomite or crushed coral to your filtration system to make the water more alkaline.

At this point I would just make sure not to have anything organic in the tank like driftwood or shells that might have snail remains deep inside.