Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This page explains a little, as you dilute an acid by 1/10 with pure water the pH should go up by 1 point, base would go down by 1 point. I guess if you diluted by 1/10 and got a reading of 7.2 that would mean that your water had been 8.2?

http://www.ph.co.za/ph_in_plain_language.html

Your hurting my brain but I'll vote yes just the same?

I think it would only work if your water was over 8 or under 6, because diluting 7.8 water is not going to produce a reading of 6.8. It gets into logarithms and stuff between 6 and 8.

Sorry mon we have stolen yer spot.
Dave you can only read up to 7.2 yes?
your water source is 7?
even if your tank ph was say 7.4 a 50/50 mix would be at your high end? take a 1/10 sample of your tank mix it with 90 percent source water and take a reading. one cup fishie water to 9 cups source water gently stir and set for 2 min. I think that will work!

then do the math .9(x) + .1(y) = z

Brain strain!

Guys, i think you're way off base.

What i meant by a high range PH test was a seperate bottle that tested between 7.4 and 8.9

The math you posted amy or maynot work for a pure acid and pure water.

What i know is that it DEFINATlY won't work for aqua. Our aim is to have buffered water, by definition buffers "buffer the change of PH". I'm not a chemist. Maybe one who has done UNI chem can confirm this for me.

Your system WILL work for PPM readings, just not PH.

Apart from everything else i've mentioned PH is a LOG scale, 8 being 10x more basic than 7 and 9 being 100x more basic than 7 and 10 being 1000x more basic than 7.

I tested my high range ph today, and it read right at the bottom of the scale. The fish are ravenous, water temp is up to 26.5, so I have dropped one heater out. Unfortunately, the poly tank is at 15 degs, so I really need to do something about that before I can open the tap between the two tanks and hook in the growbeds.

Did a water test this morning wwasn't going to then thought I wonder what the nitrates are doing? They are at about 40! Nitrites are 0, ammonia seems to be about .25 which concerns me a bit. Could this be because I am feeding too much?

Should I do a bit of a water change?

Or slow down the feeding for a couple of days? I am afraid they will jump out of the tank looking for food!


I am bringing the growbeds on line pretty soon, as soon as I can work out how to get the water temp up in the poly tank without using electric heaters.

.25 is nothing to worry about Stu. Just monitor to make sure it doesn't keep rising. In my opinion amonia and nitrite can fluctuate from 0 to the lowest reading from time to time.

Yeah, saw yours did the same thing. While the fish are happy, I am going to try not to worry testing. Curiosity gets me every time!

if you are worried about them jumping out the tank, you could put a duck decoy on the water to "scare" them down to the bottom. But i would only bother with that if you actually loose some because they are jumping out

One did a jump over a power cord before when I was feeding them.

wow you reply quick....

If they are jumping over powercords, you could train em to jump through hoops for food. But then it might make em harder to eat

As long as they don't do a kamikazi double pike over the edge.