PH Buffer, Die Die must. Period. Options

[mountain]

splitted from thread here.
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I think for PH crash it might be misleading to have SODIUM BICARBONATE as 1st line of treatment .. SODIUM BICARBONATE is for buffering water, and not for treatment of fish's health plus if the PH crash, HB wouldn't advised you to dump 2 teaspoon of BS into the water immediately

[desireless]

Why would you want to buffer your old water for? As mentioned before, pH buffering is to make sure the water will maintain longer at a certain stabilized pH. It's purpose is NOT to raise the pH of your water. This act is dangerous

Ok, assuming that you do that...

The most amount of SB that you can add to your water, is the amount that will bring the dkH of your water to max 7dkH. Anything more than that might not do good for your fishes. So for example, if your old water pH is already at 6 and you buffer the water to 5dkH. And assuming that 0.2 rise per dkH increased (for that pH range), the pH in your old water will stablize at 7pH (6 + 5x0.2pH rise = 6+1). This might spell danger, depending on the temperature of the old water. Please refer to this chart on the toxicity of ammonium at different pH at 25 degrees celcius. The graph will shift for other temperature. But you can see the trend that at lower pH, the ammonia in the form of ammonium will be harmless to your fishes. At 25 degree celcius, if you do this, your fish are lucky to survive if it happened that the ammonia level is at a level of 4ppm and below (refering to that chart)

Upon seeing your old water is already at pH6, you ought to change the water 100% to be safe. Then having buffer the new water, the 100% water will be maintained at pH7.9 (7.5 from tap + little more due to SB) for a long time (say, one week). Meaning to say, the water will maintain at maybe pH7.9 for a steady one week. That's the way you should buffer your aquarium. Don't worry about the small increase in the pH of your new water at this point of time.

Things to take note of:
- If you never have the habit of buffering your water and want to start now, then do a 100% water change and buffer the new water to 5dkH accordingly.
- Do not buffer old water as much as possible. Meaning, buffer only new water.
- Observe water change routine as strictly as possible. 100% ought to be done regularly too. For eg, you do 30% change every wed and 100% change every Sunday.
- So for that 30% change, you only buffer the new 30% water.

pH Buffering will STABILIZE your pH. The main usage of SB is NOT TO RAISE pH. I personnaly see the "increment of pH" due to buffering, as a "side-effect". But there's no worry for this because the increment is always very little.

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Take another example. Same setup. But your old water is already at pH7. so you add SB to the water. The pH of the water rises due of this "pH increment side-effect of SB" to say, 7.5pH. Read the chart again from the 4.0 ppm down. You'll reach an "orange" area. At this point of time, it spells danger to your fishes.