high pH -- how to stop!

[dallast1]

my pH has been increasing steadily over past month. I do dose with kalkwasser as my makeup water. i perform, at a minimum, monthly 20%-25% water changes.
recently have been adding baking soda to bring pH down. but this works only temporarily. my pH is now regularly between 8.5 - 8.9.

any ideas on what's going on here? need some feedback!

thanks,

dallast

 

[hippo23]

what is your source water?
check the ph of that
also suspend the use of kalk for awhile and use a different supplement and see if that helps

 

[Anonymous]

What are you using to test the ph, a ph meter or test kit?

How do your animals look? If they look good, relax, don't do anything drastic because of your perceived problem.

The ph on my system ran chronically high for over a year. I quit worrying about it since everthing looked great.

Louey

 

[-JB]

Calibrate whatever you are using to check your pH. It's probably off.

 

[Anonymous]

But even if the calibration is off he still might be running too high ph. Can you cut back on the Kalk and use something like b-ionic for some of your calcium needs?

 

[-JB]

I would recalibrate to make sure your pH is really that high first. I've had my pH monitor drift to the high end, then when it was calibrated found out my pH was actually low not high.

 

[dallast1]

thanks for the options, guys!
my source water is ro from very good ro filter. yes, i am using a pH meter, so will recalibrate to check.
have stopped dosing kalk for now (pH was 8.9 yesterday afternoon!)
will try using b-ionic (but did notice a huge spike in pH last week when i used b-ionic ....hmmm.)

what are thoughts on magnesium and pH? was concerned as slaifert test showed 0 magnesium. but then i added kent magnesium (few drops) to test vial....still resulted in 0 mg. that was strange, i thought. perhps kent product interferes with result. or test kit is faulty, though salifert is usually quite reliable.

dallast