ph at night

[Slyguy00]

How come you guys dont check your P.H? Im relatively new to the hobby and have always been told P.H is quite important to monitor and keep consistent.

[tang daddy]

I think my ph controller is out, it reads 8.5 and goes to 8.7 or even 8.8...

Everything looks fine and I am too lazy to recalibrate.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Slyguy00

How come you guys dont check your P.H? Im relatively new to the hobby and have always been told P.H is quite important to monitor and keep consistent.

I can't think of anything that makes it important. It's also tough to measure unless you have an often calibrated meter. Unless you have some weird circumstance where you suspect it could be affected, it's going to sit somewhere between 7.8 and 8.4. All good values. If you live in a house with 30 people and have no windows, it could drop too low from CO2, but most tanks are just fine. Lots of dying material could affect it, but then a NH3 test is the better tool. If you're fish aren't jumping out of the tank, and your corals aren't dissolving, you're fine

[mike31154]

Only time I bother checking pH is when I'm adding livestock and that's not very often. Gives me a better idea of how long to drip acclimate the new critter before setting it loose in my tank. The stagnant water in the sealed bag you carry home from the LFS can have significantly different pH than your tank. If I remember correctly, inverts can be sensitive to large, quick swings in pH. If the swing takes place over a 24 hr period, such as the night/day cycle in most folks' systems, it's usually no problem.

I use the chem colour changing kit to check. Early days in the hobby I considered getting a probe but when I read up on the requirements for calibration & periodic replacement of the tip, it was an easy choice to do without.

[Bill]

I see this as an opportunity to add kalk...

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Slyguy00

How come you guys dont check your P.H? Im relatively new to the hobby and have always been told P.H is quite important to monitor and keep consistent.

When I first started I was checking and trying to change. I was using a digital meter which I found my MH affected. But as tank matured I found ph stablized. It was/is more important to check the big three as if your ph is out chances are one of the big three were out.

Also with the amount of water changes I do I'm at nsw levels

[kien]

I see fighting pH as an opportunity to crash your tank.

[Slyguy00]

Thanks for the info guys.

[daniella3d]

PH is important, yes and no. I never saw any bad side effect of having a low PH, of course depending how low.

When using the AC for a week when there was a heat wave here my PH dropped drastically to 7.3 at night because I did not open the windows. That did not have any effect on my corals or fish.

I find that tracking the PH with my controller can be a good indication if something is wrong, so I put an alert for low PH, but beside that I don't really check it.

Originally Posted by Slyguy00

How come you guys dont check your P.H? Im relatively new to the hobby and have always been told P.H is quite important to monitor and keep consistent.