Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello I am in south florida ; west palm hot and humid ;trying to get my ph down; any suggestins??

use phosphoric acid, marketed as PH Down at hydro shops.

And do it slowly

with the limestone chips in the media, I doubt that you really want to try to chemically bring your pH down. It will likely become a very $$ battle since as soon as you bring the pH down some the limestone will dissolve a bit and bring the pH back up.
I fear this could cause you some pH bouncing which won't be good for your fish, plants, or bacteria. pH down is rather $$ too. I think you would be better off trying the peat and/or coco coir in some of the containers to see if that will help bring your pH down a little bit. It will tint your water dark though.

Or you could slowly switch most of your containers over to quartz river rock without the limestone chips until your system pH settles a little lower.

phosphoric acid was suggested, that stuff is in any carbonated cola drink. I drink a lot of coke and someone told me how bad for you it is so I looked up what is in it. my ph is high too so I'm just gonna tip a can of coke in it and see what happens... lol.

well art, I could send you some of my LOW pH @ 6.4 and you could send me some of yours @ 8.0
solve both probs at the same time! good in theory!

Hello! I'm in Delray Beach,FL (just starting up). I went to the big orange box and bought pea sized river gravel. It runs about $3.69 for a small bag of it and I used 4 for 2- 10 gallon containers. I started with dechlorinating city water but the pH was too high even using chemical for the chloroamine they use here. So I am visiting the golf course outside our subdivision and return with water. I figure with all the fish and ducks living there, I might get the system to cycle. We need more rain!!!!!.

Oh, I have a few golf balls in the planters. The best use of those white flying missiles! And I had a fatality with the fishless cycling. I thought that all animal life would be safe with fishless cycling but a lizard met his maker.

i think river gravel might help keep the ph down

The PH in my fully cycled mature system runs 8.2. My well water runs 8.0. Hve not lost a fish in months with no treatment for PH. However when adding fish I use an isolation tank and salt it to roughly 3ppt. and to reduce shock I bring the PH down to 7.4 or so. To do so I use garden gypsum. Cheap and readily available. After a few days I do a 50% water change with my well water to adjust the fish slowly to higher PH. After a week or 10 days when I transfer them to the pond or system they usually do fine. When I didnt do this I lost 16 out of 20 channel catfish in a week.

Acclimatisation to pH and water temperature are important points to remember when first introducing your fish to a system....

Very good point Spiritrancho.... and nice staged approach to the problem....

Another way to get pH down is to have a pine needle bog somewhere in the system.

One APer says:

From a pH thread on the barrelponics list -
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/barrelponics/message/8000

Nice link Karen, just a couple of points on that tho:

1) generally we have tried to keep pH movement to no greater than 0.25/day, this keeps the fish more happier

2) not too sure of leaving pine needles in indefinitely as normally when a system finishes cycling, the tendancy is for the pH to start heading towards 6

3) I know pine needles are a good mulch for weeds and such and would firstly check if there is any toxicity problems with fish before introducing it to an AP system

Having said that, it is may be a very good natural source for reducing pH (I have the reverse problem however of raising my pH up to 7ish )

Ell, I think he did it before he added fish, but I'm not sure. Good points!

shells