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

[goldrush]

Dear Newbies

On the subject of pH and what it has to do with my fish keeping?
Now first you don’t have to obtain a pHD to understand the basic concept.
Scientifically pH stands for the power of Hydrogen and it is use to express the degrees of acidity or alkalinity in the solution

Mathematically pH is a logarithmic scale from 0-14 with pH 0 to 6.99 classed as acidic,ph 7 as neutral and 7.01 to 14 as alkaline

Take water for example H2O
It actually contain equal amount of H and OH ions.Just bear in mind too much H ions are acidic and too much OH ions are alkaline
So in the event H ions are allowed to rise,the water becomes more acidic and pH drops.

Now because pH scale is logarithmic,each change of one pH unit is TEN fold( X10)
For example ,if pH drop from 7 to 6,it means the hydrogen concerntration and therefore acidity increases by 10.Supposedly pH drops from 7 to 5 then the acidity increases to 100 times!

Now the goldfish preference in pH would be in the range of 6.6 to 8.5 in order to maintain healthy growth ,tissue regeneration and reproduction, in short to survive
Now what makes pH drops have already been thoroughly explained in the previous thread so I’m not going to be drawn into this topic.But I would like to highlight one important aspect of pH and ammonia toxicity which is highly related and feared.

Now ammonia exist in 2 forms,freeNH3 and ionized NH4.Of these two free is regarded more harmful and the toxicity of ammonia is directly influenced by temperature and pH.

Now buffer is a chemical term to describe a substance of having the capability to maitain a steady pH.Now the pH will drop through usually insufficient partial water changes and increased carbon dioxide entry(respiration) which is usually buffered by the alkanity of water.Over a period of time,the carbonate which are natural buffer will be lost as it react with the acidic pollutants and form a new compound.This will cause a depletion of the buffering potential of the water,accompanied by unstable pH and affects eventually the health of your fish.
So if your basic filtration are inadequate to shoulder the biosystem requirement,we have to artificially introduce buffer in the form of NaHCO3(baking soda)to offset any discrepancy and maintain pH stability.Have you ever wonder while some LFS here have a female stocking filled with coral chips or its equivalent thrown in a limited filtration setup.That’s the reason.

In short pH is never a fixed value but continues to fluctuate in dynamism and measuring pH and monitoring its value gives us a rough guide of its alkalinity and indirectly the buffering capacity of your system

Hope you will understand its significant now

Regards

goldrush