Hi All,

The Novice fish-keeper is back,, Have had my 160Litre tank humming really really well for years, with weekly to fortnitely cleans and PH , Ammonia and Nitrate always with good readings. Until today I woke to one of my red eye tetras dead at the bottom of the tank and my PH Level as high as a kite 8.4- 8.8, ammonia and nitrate still fine. My question is what would make the PH sky rocket, I did a clean last week-end and all seemed fine have added to fish Dwarf Gourami'sthe day after clean. What makes PH spike? have done a water change tonite and will check again tomorrow. Any ideas on why my PH may have spiked will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers :dunno:

What ornaments, substrate, and other things that could be leaching chemicals into the water do you have?

What is the pH of your tap water?

Any other new things you have done?

the clean up may have caused the spike

exactly what did the clean up involve?

Standard Vacuum gravel and wipe down of glass,, but the filter did chuck out some black as dust for twenty odd seconds and hung round for a few minutes, I changed filter contents tonite also, so thinking that may have been the cause.

Cheers

Therein lies the problem---you chucked the bugs out with the bath water.

black dust??, did you add new carbon???

and why did it chuck it out?, did you turn off the filter or change it round??,

best tip I learnt was to leave the filter alone as much as possible untill it starts to slow down.

best tip I learnt was to leave the filter alone as much as possible untill it starts to slow down.

Good idea for biological filtration, bad idea for mechanical filtration or anything like canister filters that combine the two.

Am I right in assuming that a canister produces better mechanical filtration when it gets a bit gunged up.

Only if you don't have the correct density pads in there.

mechanical filtration is normally a very minor part of the filtration required in a standard tank most of the mechanical filtration in most filters is actually acting as biological. only time I have found mechanical to be important is when keeping pleco's with their sawdust bums

A slow sand filter (used to clarify water supplies) has a layer that forms on top of the physical filter media called schmutzdeccke which is where the bacteria live and the physical filtration is good enough to remove some parasites which are pretty resistant to chlorination. Whithout this it does not work and during maintenance they are careful to leave enough to seed it. The physical filtration improves as the gunge builds up.

Alan you're not wrong, but the type of filter you're talking about is very different from a standard aquarium filter. You are talking about cleaning and purifying a continuous flow of water, rather than processing and removing waste from a closed system.

mechanical filtration is normally a very minor part of the filtration required in a standard tank most of the mechanical filtration in most filters is actually acting as biological. only time I have found mechanical to be important is when keeping pleco's with their sawdust bums

I disagree, I think mechanical filtration is a very important, and often overlooked, aspect for even a "standard" tank. Waste caught in mechanical filtration can either do one of two things, A; sit there and decompose, being broken down into nitrite then nitrate by the biological filtration, eventually to be removed by a water change, or B; be removed from the system by cleaning the mechanical filter media. Option B is far better IMO, as removing waste from the system before it has time to break down reduces the load on the biological filter, and will reduce the amount of nitrate created and therefore decrease the amount/frequency of water changes needed. The only reason mechanical filter media would act as biological filtration is when it isn't cleaned frequently enough, and if the system has sufficient biological media then there is no need to rely on beneficial bacteria in the mechanical media to keep the nitrogen cycle happening.

We will have to agree to disagree. It is a good thing we do not always agree otherwise life could become very boring.

:iag: , damn where is the I disagree smiley

:iag: , damn where is the I disagree smiley

:rolfl:

I also agree, who I agree with is open to debate :fshi:

I concur.

hrmmm so did anyone solve the problem of the mysterious pH spike???

No we decided it was better to embrace and accept the pH spike as one of us instead of disagreeing and arguing over its origins, even though sometimes it is necessary to disagree about agreeing to disagree. Though now I think about it I don't really know if that means I've agreed to anything or not. I do know I like ice cream though. I saw an ad on the television about how ice cream makes everyone happy. It sure makes me happy. At least we can all agree that we don't need to disagree about that. What were we talking about again?

icecream is evil it gives you icecream headaches