Your Test Kit is Not Your Friend
- Feb 25, 2024
- Anshika Mishra
- 127 0 0
You need to have that symbiotic relationship with the life that is going on in your tank. And once you get that, you have a unique sense of what's happening in the tank. And you can look at it and know that it's great or if it needs help.
The Reality of a Thriving Tank
Follow the life. If you must follow the fish and the plant, see what it is doing. If life is thriving, what does that show you about the water condition?
If the live is thriving, it doesn't matter what the measurement is. Theat synthetic. That's just a number.
If the fishes are not thriving, if they are starving, if they are sick, if the plants are not living, then you need to dig into it more deeply and figure out what you can do to create an environment where they can thrive.
Don't worry about the pH or hardness. Don't chase your water's parameters because it'll make it crazy and kill your fish.
Focus on the fish and other forms of life in your tank. And do whatever you can to encourage that to increase the environment of life to have the living you are striving for. It doesn't have to happen by paying attention to the pH or other matters.
Observing Your Tank
Don't observe the parameters to the point where you are messing up something that doesn't need to be messed with. The reality is that unless you have a problem and need to figure out what the problem is, there's not a lot of point to chasing nitrites, ammonia, or pH.
All it does is make you do things. That increases the variations in the tank. In other words, if you have a tank becoming gradually more acidic, it has inadequate buffers. Soon, it will reach a point where it will stop. At that point, the buffers will balance it out, and it will stay there.
That's more commonly what happens. If it worsens, you'll start noticing problems with plants and fish. But it's uncommon. It's unusual for water to lose pH unless you do something to cause it.
For example, use rainwater or top it off with RO water. The buffers tend to diminish in this case, and the pH will drop. There's a good reason for topping off with tap water because it maintains stability, particularly if you have plants in tanks.
It happens because the plants and other organics in the tank are assimilating a certain amount of that general hardness.
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