I have had a pH problem the past week. I initially tried opening my patio door with an air pump outside putting air from outside into my sump to raise the oxygen level. However, pH was still low after 2 days. It was around 7-7.5. So I added some Kalk to raise the pH and it worked for a little while and overnight my pH monitor on my seneye went off again and the PH seems to be around 8.4-8.5- testing with the Red Sea kit to confirm there is no issue with the seneye slide. I tested mag and that was 1360 then Alk was 14, Ca was way less than 290. It only took .4 mL in the Red Sea kit to change the color. So I dosed Ca and retested and it didn't change so I dosed Ca again and still no change. I am stuck at this point on what I need to do. Any suggestions?
pH, Ca, Alk issues
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Randy Holmes-Farley
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FWIW, I'm not a fan of using water changes to deal with calcium and alkalinity issues. I think of it as the uninformed effort of people who do not understand the chemistry involved. lol
Oscar47f
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Well i agree but you don't always have to make things complicated especially for some people that don't really wanna learn it. I feel like water changes are an easier way to balance ions with the right concentrations lol idk im not a chemist, im an engineering student so i wouldn't know too much. could you explain your thoughts, it would be interesting to know lol?
Randy Holmes-Farley
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The problem is that if you don't know what the problem is, you don't know whether a water change actually helps or hurts, and when folks say it helped them, doing nothing for the same time might have also helped. That's a classic issue in all of science: an experimental result without any control result.
