pH in Reef Aquaria

by Brian Verdine

This is a basic guide to pH in reef aquaria. There are many resources online for getting much more detailed information if you need it (e.g., http://www.reefkeeping.com/ issues/2004-09/rhf/index.php was heavily referenced). What is pH? pH (which stands for power of hydrogen) is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution and for most purposes can be thought of as referencing the concentration of hydrogen (H+) in the solution. Pure water has a pH of 7.00, which is considered neutral. Solutions with pH greater than 7.00 are considered basic and below 7.00 are considered acidic. pH is a logarithmic scale, which means that at pH 7.00 there is 10x as much H+ in solution as there is at pH 8.00.

Why is it important? The single biggest reason to worry about pH in a reef tank set-up is the health of the organisms in your care, almost all of which are sensitive to pH. For example, calcification can only occur in stony corals at sufficiently high pH. What that essentially means is that stony corals can only grow when the pH is high enough that they are able to build new skeleton. At lower pH, coral skeleton may actually begin to dissolve faster than the coral is able to make new, which is obviously not beneficial to the health of the animal. Other types of tanks are influenced by pH and are subject to pH problems, but pH is of particular concern in stony reefs where calcification will tend to use up the tanks alkalinity (see below for a description of alkalinity) and put it at higher risk of more rapid pH swings. Alkalinity is the degree to which a solution maintains its pH when acids are added. Alkalinity additives are often called buffers because maintaining recommended levels of alkalinity will help to stabilize pH. Recommendations for pH A pH range somewhere between 7.8 and 8.5 is usually recommended for reef tanks. Natural sea water is, on average, 8.2, but obviously there are local variations. As with almost all ranges youll see like this, hitting the middle of the range is probably optimal for the widest range of organisms. Also, like most reef parameters, maintaining a relatively stable reading is probably more important than fretting over hitting an exact pH. In general, pH in saltwater systems will try to fall over time due to the addition of acids into the aquarium from excess carbon dioxide (CO2), biological filtration (nitrification) occurring in your live

rock and sandbed, and organic acids from waste in the tank. These downward trends in pH need to be corrected and there are a number of methods for addressing low pH. Normal pH maintenance Partial water changes are one of the easiest ways to stabilize pH and for small or medium sized tanks are very practical. In addition to increasing the buffers in your water, regular water changes help to restore trace minerals that are impractical to dose (i.e., dosing a range of trace minerals would be time consuming, they can be hard and expensive to test for, and they need to be added in such small amounts that overdosing is a real possibility). Addressing the root of many pH problems by removing uneaten foods and fish waste through skimming and mechanical filtration is another fix. Carefully monitoring what you feed can also help. Using regular water changes and actively removing wastes during the process is often adequate for maintaining pH, particularly in tanks with low calcium and alkalinity demands. Inadequate aeration in the aquarium can also have a drastic effect on pH. Respiration by the organisms in your aquarium will add carbon dioxide to your water and if this built up CO2 is not driven off, your water will become more acidic. Increasing circulation in your tank and incorporating air stones or a protein skimmer will often address problems caused by excess CO2. Raising pH There are a number of additional ways to raise pH levels that are particularly effective for higher demand reefs. Adding baking soda, commercially available pH raising products, and/or kalk are easy, fast, and economically feasible methods (when I say fast I mean not very time consuming for the reefer quick changes in pH should almost never be the goal as pH spikes can be stressful to your tank inhabitants). All of these chemical methods will increase your alkalinity, and by extension, your pH. Assuming your tank is heavily populated with stony corals, the above methods may be implemented on a continuous basis and automated in order to counteract the excessive reduction of alkalinity in the tank due to coral growth. These automated solutions for dosing pH raising substances can ensure that pH is not changed too radically by spreading out a dose over a longer time period. Calcium reactors can also control pH and alkalinity problems, but they are relatively expensive when compared with many of the other pH solutions and are usually only used by advanced reefers. Lowering pH In some cases, pH may end up on the high side, requiring the aquarist to lower pH. In almost all cases, high pH results from an overdose of the chemical means of raising pH that are mentioned above. As long as the pH spike is not excessive, it is usually advisable to simply allow the tank to correct itself over time. If the spike is large enough, there are a number of remedies for quickly reducing the pH to a more normal level. Vinegar or lemon juice have been used by aquarists in the past along with commercially available products designed for pH reduction.