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ph fluctuation!

bazz

Member
Joined
24 Jan 2009
Messages
774
Location
Lincoln
right, after waiting a few weeks for my 80g disposable co2 bottle to run out (on 24/7), i was quite pleased this morning to go and put the kettle on, and not hear the diffuser fizzing away, as i was geared up to switch to a 350g bottle and a solenoid. the tank is a 30x30x35h nano, ph 6.5, kh5 and gh4 (using ro water reconstituted with kh and gh powder) and is kept in the kitchen which has no windows, so the generic 11w pc is on from 4pm-12am. however, as the kitchen light brightened i noticed the 8 microrasboras were extremely stressed. as i prepared to do a ph test one of them leapt out the tank, no sooner had i netted it up off the floor and put it back, another (or the same one) liberated itself onto the kitchen worktop. anyway i got round to testing the ph and found it to have risen to ph7.5!
what i would like to know is, is this going to happen every night? the co2 was off for less time than it will be when it is on the timer!
incidently, while the microrasboras were in a state, i saw one of the japonica's snatch at one and catch it, luckily he escaped, but i think it may explain what happened to the other four, that went missing!
 
The pH swing is not causing the stress itself but merely a sign that something else is wrong.

I think your issue is the level of CO2 in the water that stressed the fish and caused them to jump.
 
Hi,
Something doesn't compute. Your fish jumped when the pH of the tank was high. This indicates a low CO2 content, therefore they were stressed by something else, not by pH or pH fluctuations and not by CO2 or CO2 fluctuations. If the pH at the time of jumping was very low, indicating a high CO2 level, then there would be a correlation between their behavior and the high CO2 content. But just the opposite happened, they jumped when CO2 level was at rock bottom.

You also make mention of some form of predation occurring in the tank. It is much more likely therefore that their behavior is attributable to predation and/or a perceived threat than due to CO2.

Cheers,
 
ok, thanx for the reassurance, connecting the solenoid will be tomorrow nights project!
cheers, bazz!
 
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