pH plays a very important role in fish keeping. Improper pH level can be fatal for your fish therefore it is very important to have the correct pH level corresponding to the type of fish.
Seachem Acid and Alkaline Buffer is designed to do just that. They are an effective and easy to use system suitable for beginner or veteran fish keepers and don't contain phosphate.
Adjusting pH can be dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Suddenly huge pH changes will cause pH shock which is fatal for your fishes. If you’re not familiar with aquarium water chemistry, you can easily make the mistake by just following the instructions of pH lowering products. This is because water that has no hardness will be too soft to use any pH lowering products. Water with zero hardness will fluctuate greatly when pH altering chemical is dose in the water.
But not to worry, by using the combined system of Seachem Acid and Alkaline buffer we eliminated this problem as well as giving an accurate adjustment. Just follow the suggested ratio chart printed on the products to target a specific pH. To use the chart, you will first need to determine the amount of Alkaline Buffer that is needed or the desired KH level for your aquarium water volume for the specific pH. You might want to have a high KH level if you have fishes that prefer high KH or if you water pH drop really fast. As higher KH means harder water and harder water will have a more stable pH. For example:
For a 150L tank that would like to have the pH set to 6.5 while having 4dKH. Since 6g of Alkaline Buffer on 80L of water volume will raise kH by 2.8dKH, we would need around 17g to raise the KH of our 150L aquarium to KH of 4dKH.
Formule:
150L (aquarium volume) / 80(water volume of each 6g Alkaline Buffer treat) x 6g = 11.25
By using 11.25g of Alkaline Buffer on our 150L aquarium, our KH will be raised to 2.8dKH. And because we wanted a KH of 4dKH which is 1.5x of 2.8dKH, we would multiply 11.25g with 1.5 which is about 17g.
So now we get the amount of Alkaline Buffer that we want to raise KH at 4dKH. To determine the Acid Buffer that we need to bring our pH to 6.5, we just need to look at the chart and divide our 17g with the number in the middle of the chart corresponding to the pH that we wanted. In this case it’s 1.3. Which means the Acid Buffer that we need to dose is 17 divided by 1.3 and the result is 13.
So to get a pH of 6.5 with 4dKH in a 150L aquarium we will dose 17g of Alkaline Buffer along with 13g of Acid Buffer. It is as simple as that. This dose can be administered after each water change to maintain the desired pH. Dose according to the amount of new water being added but if stable pH can’t be accrue, full dose can be applied. Remember not to change more then 0.5 pH ina day.