Keeping hospital tank water at the right parameters??

[Laith]

I'm a bit lost at the moment, funnily enough probably because of reliance on plants and CO2 injection!

I have a heavily planted 200L community tank with CO2 injection controlled by a pH controller. There are four discus in it and one of them most probably has hex or spiro .

I therefore set up an 80L tank to act as a hospital tank. Basically a bare tank with a heater, light, aeration and an internal power filter filled with biofilter sintered glass balls taken from the main tank.

I filled the hospital tank with 40L of water from the main tank and a 40L mix of RO and tap water in order to get a KH of 3-4.

Put the sick discus in it last night, dosed the meds per instructions. Today I checked the water parameters in the hospital tank: KH=3.5, GH=1, NH3/4=0, NO2=0, NO3=0. All fine and good (however the GH seems low but I think this is due to an older GH test reagent...) but the pH is at 7.85!

My main tank has a pH setting of 6.6 and varies during the day from 6.5 to 6.7 with water that also has a KH of 3.

So I assume that the hospital tank water, being aerated and very lightly populated (1 fish in 80 liters) has no CO2 at all and therefore pH went up...

I am so used to having just the pH I want by simply varying the amount of CO2 I inject that I've forgotton what to do in a case like this!!

So, how do I lower the pH in the hospital tank and keep it low (at least down to around 7). I guess I could put some peat in there but that is very slow and anyway not sure its a good idea with the meds in there. I could also do water changes with mixed RO/tap water to the desired pH but this would also get rid of the meds...

Any ideas ? Or just keep it as is at this pH?

Thanks,

Laith

[general1107]

why not just buy some lower ph chemicals to lower the ph?

[ninoboy]

Leave it as it is. Don't alter the pH and definitely not with chemicals especially in a hospital tank. You may end up killing you sick fish with it. Just use more water from the main tank and let the pH swing slowly in the hospital tank. After that, you won't have any problem with water change.

[pphx459]

Just saw this thread while looking up hospital tank setups. If it was up to me I would just take out the aeration so that the pH doesn't change as fast.

[Wasserpest]

Originally Posted by Laith

I am so used to having just the pH I want by simply varying the amount of CO2 I inject that I've forgotton what to do in a case like this!!

So, how do I lower the pH in the hospital tank and keep it low (at least down to around 7). I guess I could put some peat in there but that is very slow and anyway not sure its a good idea with the meds in there. I could also do water changes with mixed RO/tap water to the desired pH but this would also get rid of the meds...

Any ideas ? Or just keep it as is at this pH?

Inject a little CO2?

[anonapersona]

I have a Hagen CO2 unit on the Q tank and some wood with java fern on it. If I had to move a fish that needed meds, I'd put the wood in a plastic bag to keep it moist and clean the Q tank really well, maybe with PP or bleach even to sterilize it, crank up the Hagen unit to get the pH right -- you can adjust the input level of the Hagen to control how much the pH lowers. As the unit winds down over several weeks, the pH will adjust to tap water conditions very slowly, but the discus might be better before then.

I've not had to do this yet, I've simply treated all my discus in their BB tank. But, I understand your problem, and eventually these fish will be in a planted tank also.

The big problem is that you would expect to do frequent water changes on a Q tank, and you have to hope that the tap water comes in with a lowered pH due to CO2 and you can maintain it there with the Hagen unit, otherwise the discus is seeing fluctuating pH and will be unhappy. So, you'd try to match the Q tank to fresh tap pH.