What have I done!

[Tuan’s Reef]

while it's on.

People always talk about getting higher ph by getting fresh air into the house by running your skimmer air intake outside or opening windows (not as much human and dog breath). The reverse is also true. Our breath is laden with carbon dioxide an it quickly lowers ph.

I sometimes hold my breath because I fear I’m releasing too much co2 near my tank lol

 

[Brett S]

Stability is key and obviously the goal is to keep things as stable as possible, but I think when things go wrong and something happens the gut reaction to try to get things back to the way they were can often cause more harm than good.

Going from 7-8 dkh and a pH of 8.2 to 8.5 over a short period of time isn’t great, but it’s not terrible. But turning around and immediately dropping the alkalinity and/or pH means that the inhabitants have now gone through two sudden changes and not one, which will only add additional stress.

8 dkh and a pH of 8.5 are well within the “safe range” and as suggested above I think the right move here would have been to leave it and allow it to slowly and naturally drop over a few days.

Obviously there are times when quick action is required... if the alkalinity had been raised to 12 or the ph shot up to 9.5, for example. Those levels can be dangerous in themselves and it would be prudent to do some quick water changes to get things back into a safe range.

But in cases like this where the levels are raised, but still safe I feel you are much better off not subjecting your livestock to a second stressful event by quickly changing things again.

 

[Stigigemla]

I would calibrate the pH meter.
I have 2 friends crashing their tanks because the tried to rise the pH to 8.0
But the pH electrode was way off.