Soooo....here in Australia we are in the middle of spring and earlier in the season my big wattle tree which is close-ish to my pond bloomed...and all the lovely yellow flowers fell into my pond...and now its all sunk to the bottom. Since I don't have a skimmer or a drain (sigh) I will have to jump in next weekend and remove all the sludge and whatnot at the bottom of my pond (and probably plant some more water plants in too. I managed to 'borrow' some pH strips from a lab where I 'do things' and the pH read somewhere between 6.0 - 6.5. Should I just mix in some baking soda to get it back up a bit? I estimate that I have about 2500 gallons of water (thx google xD). Probably test the pH again tomorrow. Any idea how much baking soda I should put in?
pH: Wattle tree...and acidity
- Thread starter Tsuska
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koiguy1969
GIGGETY-GIGGETY!!
yep,baking soda is your safest bet for raising your ph...it wont raise it past 8.4 and thats still a reasonable ph. but do it in smaller increments. because ph swings (sudden signicant changes) are not good in either direction, up or down...cleaning the debris will help with water clarity,by removing potental tannins before theyre released into the water, and quality, by removing the source of potential toxins, parasites etc.....
Unfortunately testing pH doesn't tell you how much baking soda to add, you really need to test KH to tell. If you test for KH and keep it in the 100-200 ppm range you never have to test pH because you'll know it's 8.3 to 8.5. On the other hand if you only test pH and it's 8.5 you'll have no idea if KH is 200 ppm or 2,000 ppm. You'll only know when pH drops and then you're already in trouble.
However, just as an estimate, assuming the KH is 80 ppm (I assume it's even lower) you could add 2 to 3 kg of baking soda to get to get into the 150 to 220 ppm range. A little over 200 ppm would be OK. So you might want to buy a sack at a restaurant supply. It lasts forever if kept dry and if your water is that acid you'll probably need more.
There is one danger you should understand before tossing in any baking soda...if you don't test ammonia you won't know if it's zero. If it is above zero, which isn't good by itself, increasing KH can make a bad situation worst as higher pH makes ammonia more toxic. And unfortunately a lot of people think if you add baking soda slowly it will change pH slowly and that's not really very true. You could add 1 kg and not see much change in pH, or see a short term pop and have it go low the next day. When KH builds to a buffering level pH will shoot up. The fish can handle the jump up as long as there's no ammonia. In a perfect world you would raise the pH slowly, but that's not very easy to do.
Here's a good source if you want more info or a more expert opinion. There are a lot of sites that just kind of copy what they read on some other site and each translation loses some info and adds some info so not exactly accurate. The higher end Koi keepers take this stuff pretty seriously.
However, just as an estimate, assuming the KH is 80 ppm (I assume it's even lower) you could add 2 to 3 kg of baking soda to get to get into the 150 to 220 ppm range. A little over 200 ppm would be OK. So you might want to buy a sack at a restaurant supply. It lasts forever if kept dry and if your water is that acid you'll probably need more.
There is one danger you should understand before tossing in any baking soda...if you don't test ammonia you won't know if it's zero. If it is above zero, which isn't good by itself, increasing KH can make a bad situation worst as higher pH makes ammonia more toxic. And unfortunately a lot of people think if you add baking soda slowly it will change pH slowly and that's not really very true. You could add 1 kg and not see much change in pH, or see a short term pop and have it go low the next day. When KH builds to a buffering level pH will shoot up. The fish can handle the jump up as long as there's no ammonia. In a perfect world you would raise the pH slowly, but that's not very easy to do.
Here's a good source if you want more info or a more expert opinion. There are a lot of sites that just kind of copy what they read on some other site and each translation loses some info and adds some info so not exactly accurate. The higher end Koi keepers take this stuff pretty seriously.
Oh ty ty. Time to see if I can salvage some Nebler's reagent (har har =P) to test for ammonia. Or maybe just to be safe I can keep the water slightly acidic since the koi don't seem to be so fussed at the moment... However I gotta do something about cleaning up the debris...should do that soon when I have time. Maybe wednesday avo...
How do you keep water slightly acidic?
Yes, hope is one choice. All things are possible. Hope it works out for you.
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Get your self a good pool net and pole, they work great for removing junk that falls into the pond.