Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there,

It's winter here in France, temperature of the water is around 5°C, nitrites are 0.05ppm, NH4 is 0.05 ppm and Nitrates are around 80ppm.

But my pH dropped below 6.0 three weeks ago and I'm struggling with it. I can't raise it. I don't understand why.

Every day I add Calcium hydroxide and Potassium bicarbonate and nothing happens. Sometimes my pH raise at 7.0 and the next mornig, again it's at 6 or less... Kh is around 1.

What's the problem?

My pH target is 6.8 / 7

Thanks for helping

Take a known amount of your system water out into a bucket and see if you can adjust the water in the bucket to where it stays in the desired pH range. As you do this keep track of how much you add to the bucket to make the adjustment. This should give you a good idea of how much to add to adjust the system, if you know the system volume, the bucket volume and the amount needed in the bucket you can calculate the amount needed in the system. It's safer to figure it this way first than it is to just keep adding to the system without knowing how much is needed. Large swings in pH are tough on the AP system (especially the fish) - once you know how much to use, try to gradually change the pH in 0.3 to 0.4 pH units over a period of several days until you get the right pH. Hope this helps.

thanks my issue has solved