PH Crash?

[fecgoh]

I have tested my water a few times for the pass few weeks for ph, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, kh and gh and the results are:

ph - 5.5 to 6
ammonia - 0 mg/L
nitrites - 0 mg/L
nitrates - 5 mg/L
kh - 10 mg/L
gh - 20 mg/L

Water changes are made 3 times a week with 24 hours mature water that have a ph of 6.8. My question are why do the ph drop so fast? Is it because I have driftwood in it? Or is it because my kh and gh is too low to buffer and I got a ph crash? Do I need to add some "ph up" from the lfs?

From the test results, does it look like I have a healthy bacteria colony in the filter? My guess is "Yes" but I need to know for sure.

My last question is, with the present results, would discus be happy in it or do I need to do some changes?

Thanks in advance.

Frankie

[hemiolopterus]

Frankie,

If the pH is stable in the tank then you should not be worried about it. How fast is the pH dropping? Did you check every 30 mins or what? If the driftwood is new then yeah it will contribute alot to the low pH. In case if u wanna bring the pH up, you can use a cheaper alternative other then using the pH Up from the lfs. Just get some corals and put inside the filter or in the tank itself. This will bring the pH up but you should monitor the pH of the tank to make sure the pH is ok. Make sure that the pH is lowered down/up slowly to avoid ph shock to the fish!

How long has your tank been up? It takes a few months for the bacteria to populate in the filter to take care of the waste effectively. If your filter is using the good sponge like those from hagen's fluval filter, you will find that the sponge will turn pink after a few months which is a good sign.

Nowadays captive bred discus are much hardier compared to those caught from the wild. The tap water in Kl/PJ is good enough for the discus. At first when I first keep the discus I was also very concern bout the water quality and did lots of checking and conditioning. Now.... after 10+ years keeping discus, i found the tap water (declorinated of cos) is just fine for them. They grow and they breed as well.

my 2 cents,
Joo

[Orient]

Hemio is right on the water conditioning topic. Malaysian are blessed with good quality water thus we are spared the trouble of actually conditioning the water to the specific requirements of discus. Just pre-treat the water and use it. I age my water for about 12 hours.In my many years of keeping and breeding, I have not had trouble with just using normal tap-water. Discus will flourish and breed even in that spectrum of water specs.
Just another point to note, I'm not so sure bout using corals. They actually hardens the water considerably though they boost the ph and keep ammonia at bay. Discus will tend to act skittish in hard water. That is my personal experience.

[fecgoh]

Thanks Joo and Orient for your reply. I got myself some small corals and wash them for some time. Added a small quantity into the 2nd last layer in my filter. Check the ph yesterday and today. Register at 6.5 ph. I guess this is ok for discus. Without this my water ph will drop very fast. Even down to 5 ph. I am still keeping an eye and testing the water ph and kh closely. I also added some coral to my plant tank since it can get quite acidic from the DIY co2. Now, I wonder what do I do with the rest of the corals.

Frankie

[Orient]

Keep the coral for future tanks....

I'm sure u will be expanding your collection of this wondrous fish.... They GROW on u...

[hemiolopterus]

Yeah Orient, you are right in the sense the coral will harden up the water but I think the driftwood is leaching alot of black water as well which will soften the water. As long as the water hardness is being monitored, I think using the coral is much better using those "pH up" as the product is expensive and alot is needed to condition the tank as the wood is leaching the tanin and acid continuously. Maybe there is a cheaper alternative to bring the pH up ... which I dunno of.