RO water and seachem discus buffer

[Longfin]

Hey all!

My RO water hast still a ph of 7.6 and i bring that down to 6.5 by adding seachem discus buffer. my EC raises from 005 to around 300. will the discus buffer have all the minerals needed for my fish or should i add seachem discus trace as well? doing that would raise my EC even higher and i dont really want that. Other option would be to add tap water to my RO water till i get a EC of 100 and then buffer the ph down. does anyone know if the seachem acid buffer will raise my EC?

Thanks

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,
You can ignore the pH, the important part is the EC.

The reason pH isn't relevant is that pH is a measure of the ratio of H+ and OH- ions. In RO (which is pure H2O) you have equal numbers of H+ and OH- ions and the pH is theoretically pH7 (this is the negative log of the H+ ion, so it means 10-7 H+ ions), however the addition of any alkali (H+ acceptor) or acid ions (H+ donor) will cause the pH to go rapidly up (add an alkali and take away H+ ions, the ratio goes down, 10-8 H+ ions = pH8 ) or down (add an acid, add H+ ions, 10-6 H+ ions = pH6). Because we are talking about ratios, the actual change in ions in the water is extremely small and there is almost no difference between water at pH6 and pH8. We can measure how close to H2O our water is by measuring the electrical conductivity, pure water is an insulator and the amount of electricity it conducts goes up in direct relation to how many salts (ions) it contains.

Pure H2O isn't suitable for fish, because it contains no salts of any kind. We need to add some, the amount we need to add depends upon the fish. If we keep Marine fish they come from an extremely salty, extremely stable environment, where the huge amount of dissolved ions keeps the conductivity, ratio of different salts and pH stable, we call this stability "buffering", this is a very heavily buffered system. In fresh water we have a similar situation with the Rift lakes, where they water is stable and buffered. We use "hard" and "soft" as an easy way of describing how many salts fresh water contains.

Discus are soft water fish, they naturally come from water that has few salts in it, with an EC below 50 microS. Soft water tends to be naturally acid and more difficult to manage in the aquarium, so usually we try and keep the water a little bit more buffered and stable in the aquarium than it was in the wild.

All of this means that you don't need "Seachem Discus Buffer" at all, this is a product that you are meant to add to harder water to make them softer, but your RO is as soft as it can possibly be all ready.

You do need to add a re-mineralising salt, you could use "Seachem Trace", I'd just add enought to make your EC about 100microS. This is really a very expensive way of adding mainly calcium, it would be much cheaper to make your own re-mineralising salt.

This sort of question comes up a lot, have a look through these posts, it should make it a lot easier to decide what to do, probably dependent on your tap water.

<http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8904>
<http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12555>
<http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9323>
<http://www.plecoplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8744>

cheers Darrel

 

[Longfin]

Wow first of all thanks for this great response. so just to be absolutly clear if i bring my EC up to 100microS using seachem trace my l134 will breed even if the ph is 7.6?

Thanks

 

[macvsog23]

Wow first of all thanks for this great response. so just to be absolutly clear if i bring my EC up to 100microS using seachem trace my l134 will breed even if the ph is 7.6?

Thanks

Oh if it were just that simple.

 

[Brengun]

Been doing the same sort of research except I am trying to raise ph and stablize it from rainwater.

Seachem neutral and seachem discus both contain phosphates. Ok if you don't mind that but long term, I sorta do since plants don't particularly like them.

Seachem alkaline and acid buffer do not contain any phosphates but you will need to add in your minerals and stuff with the discus trace. Fish foods do contain some of them.

Since I am going to be raising pH I will require more of the alkaline one and just have a little bit of acid on hand in case I go overboard.

Be careful adding buffers. The idea is to do a little at a time and check it, then a little more and check it in an hour or two. There are dire consequences for cutting corners on this.

There are numerous other products you can try, just this time I am going down the all Seachem road to see if it makes any difference.

 

[Longfin]

i have a big tank for my ro water and thats where i add all the stuff i use atm which is discus buffer, prime, stability and tap water for minerals. then i make daily small waterchanges im my fishtanks to reach the levels i want.
first of all i will stop using discus buffer and only ad tap water to my ro to reach 100microS.
Still not sure if i then leave the ph at 7.6 or use seachem acid buffer to get
the ph to <6.5?

@ macvsog23 your right that would be nice and save a lot of trouble and TIME TIME TIME

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

first of all i will stop using discus buffer and only ad tap water to my ro to reach 100microS.

If your tap water is hard (contains carbonates) you can do exactly this, this is what Bob does, he cuts the RO with HMA treated tap water to get the conductivity he wants.

Still not sure if i then leave the ph at 7.6 or use seachem acid buffer to get the ph to <6.5?

You can honestly ignore the pH, it really isn't relevant, if you woiuld like it lower you can add some "Indian Almond" leaves. Once you start adding buffers the conductivity will rise, and salt rich acid water is a very different animal from naturally soft water.

cheers Darrel