"Earth, our Water Planet, is the only planet in our solar system to be endowed with appreciable quantities of liquid water. Life, born in the water, must be at least as rare as water in the Universe, and as such must be revered, under any of it's forms, as a Miracle."
Ph. This is a measure of the waters hydrogen ion concentration, ideally this should be between 7.8 and 8.4 for most tanks, although some people do run at higher levels there are inherent risks such as 'ammonia' which becomes more toxic with rising pH.
A perfect reading to aim for would be around the 8.1-8.4 range over a 24hr period but as stable as possible. i.e. if you can get a drift of less than 0.1 over 24 hours, youre doing very very well. A persistently low Ph is indicative of a lack of aeration, under efficient skimming on some systems, a poorly set-up Ca reactor giving out excess C02, lack of air circulation within the room itself, or inefficient biological filtration causing a build-up of dissolved organics (overfeeding). Large populations of algae can also cause big drops in Ph over night when O2 production stops just like terrestrial plants and C02 is released, in this instance it may be worth considering switching your lighting period over in the sump (if that's where you keep your Macro algae) to a period opposite the main tank lights, or leave the sump light on 24/7. The reason for doing this is to stabilize both pH and, to minimize the chances of Macro algae going sexual and crashing. Most pH test kits are open to interpretation where color charts are concerned.
source: andy hipkiss basic chemistry
Izzy turned me on to this guys pages and i am learning alot more than i thought i knew basic water chemistry on freshwater and swimming pools does carry over but niether are as detrimental to the systems as marine systems.
