Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Weny out today got 6 kg shellgrit and 3 kg calciun total $9.00 will use shellgrit first keep the other as standby

did a little search

coco peat
It has a pH of 5.0-6.8 which is neutral to slightly acidic. This makes it great for alkaline garden soil

BTW - my calcium carbonate was about the smae price as the shell grit. It's pretty cheap and has great results.

Interesting, I need to bring my PH down - steve said that the nitrification process will actually bring it down. I'll be very interested in your results from coco peat.

CO2 injection will apparently lower the ph also, but is certainly not the cheapest option to start out with

Steve is right, my tanks are at a ph of around 6 even touugh i use water with ph of around 8 for waterchanges

unless the ph is too high and stressing your fish, i would let it decrease naturally

Gemmel - my experience was that it took some months before nitrification started pushing my pH down, but when it did, it went quite rapidly. I expect the reason is that the dust or something else from the gravel contained a buffering agent (some sort of carbonate) which buffered the pH for a fair while.

I have read elsewhere on the forum that lemon juice can be used to bring PH down, so I might give that a go. I've got shells in there so if I bring it too far down the shells should kick in and it should be neutral (for a while anyway).