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Creating CO2 profile - baseline PH

MrClockOff

Member
Joined
20 Aug 2020
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342
Location
Bridgend
Hi all,
I was recently creating CO2 and PH profile trying to achieve 1 PH drop.
On the barrreport I’ve read that 1 PH drop is actually x10 CO2 increase compared to baseline PH. General assumption is that background CO2 level in the non saturated water is 3ppm so 1 PH drop gives us 3ppm x 10 = 30ppm
Now here on UKAPS I’ve read the sticky thread for building CO2 and PH profile and the instruction is to measure PH of fish tank water just before CO2 injection starts and aim for 1 PH drop by light on.
There is a thing I’m a little confused about. If I take a glass of water from my fish tank and leave it to outgase for 24h the baseline PH is 8.2. Fish tank PH just before CO2 injection is 8.0.
So my feeling is that my baseline PH should be from out gassed water in the glass (8.2 PH). Is my assumption correct or wrong?
Thanks 🙏
 
Hi all,
I was recently creating CO2 and PH profile trying to achieve 1 PH drop.
On the barrreport I’ve read that 1 PH drop is actually x10 CO2 increase compared to baseline PH. General assumption is that background CO2 level in the non saturated water is 3ppm so 1 PH drop gives us 3ppm x 10 = 30ppm
Now here on UKAPS I’ve read the sticky thread for building CO2 and PH profile and the instruction is to measure PH of fish tank water just before CO2 injection starts and aim for 1 PH drop by light on.
There is a thing I’m a little confused about. If I take a glass of water from my fish tank and leave it to outgase for 24h the baseline PH is 8.2. Fish tank PH just before CO2 injection is 8.0.
So my feeling is that my baseline PH should be from out gassed water in the glass (8.2 PH). Is my assumption correct or wrong?
Thanks 🙏
Hello,
Yes, all of that is correct. If the natural pH of the tank is 8.2 then your target pH is 7.2. At the end of the day however, it doesn't really matter if you are a few tenths off or not. Some probes (or reagent kits) cannot even measure that closely and 30 ppm is a mythical standard anyway. What matters is that your plants are healthy and that the fauna do not object to the CO2 concentration level.

Cheers,
 
Hello,
Yes, all of that is correct. If the natural pH of the tank is 8.2 then your target pH is 7.2. At the end of the day however, it doesn't really matter if you are of a few tenths off or not. Some probes (or reagent kits) cannot even measure that closely and 30 ppm is a mythical standard anyway. What matters is that your plants are healthy and that the fauna do not object to the CO2 concentration level.

Cheers,
Thanks ceg4048 a lot for reassuring. Hopefully I can get it right this time 🙂
 
I totally agree with CEG4048.
I live in an area that has EXTREMELY hard water (14.5) and things COULD get horrendously complicated if I aimed for perfection.
At the end of the day, my plants are thriving and my fish are spawning in an aquarium that looks fairly attractive and that's ALL that matters!
Given a choice, I'd rather be watching my fish than doing the maths to hit an arbitrary target thats gonna be difficult to obtain with my water.
 
I totally agree with CEG4048.
I live in an area that has EXTREMELY hard water (14.5) and things COULD get horrendously complicated if I aimed for perfection.
At the end of the day, my plants are thriving and my fish are spawning in an aquarium that looks fairly attractive and that's ALL that matters!
Given a choice, I'd rather be watching my fish than doing the maths to hit an arbitrary target thats gonna be difficult to obtain with my water.
the reason I had to go for PH profile is that despite my drop checker was lime green through whole photoperiod my plants were showing very bad CO2 deficiency..
PH profile revealed that the drop is stable but not significant. I have quite hard water which I think is the reason. I had to increase CO2 injection rate x3 times to get 1 PH drop. During the Easter brake I had perfect time to tweak my CO2 injection in monitor livestock behaviour. All looking OK so far. Hopefully plants will respond to the change positively 🙂
 
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