PH plumes after scraping off algae..

[johnnyenv]

Hi,

I'm trying to establish here why my PH literally dropped within 30 minutes when I was doing a large Algae clean up on my glass & rockwork. At 21:00 last night the PH was at 8.08. By 21:30 it had dropped to 7.90.

What effect does floating algae have on the tank to send the PH on a downward spike so suddenly?

I was cleaning a lot of algae off the glass. It was the green hard to remove stuff. It was mainly from the back wall. I also cleaned off some algae from the rockwork using a brush. some of the detritus made its way through the sump as the sock filled up quicker than I expected.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Floating algae has no substantial effect, but lots of broken algae cells may have released their internal contents which are likely at lower pH than 8.

That said, I have not noticed such an effect myself when cleaning glass and have not seen it reported. It may very well be caused by something else and the glass cleaning may have been coincidence.