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Bacteria tolerance in extreme low PH

Marulioides keeping condition is really in the extreme range especially when we try to emulate the natural water condition as in the swamp. Swamp water is usually in the range of 3.5PH - 4.5PH in the dry season and around 5 - 6PH in the monsoon season. The ratio of fish and water volume in the swamp is much higher when compared to our enclosed aquarium and not forgetting they have large trees in the swamp to help tackle the nitrogen waste.

As mentioned in my earlier post that when keeping marulioides in the range below PH4 everything remains stagnant including the poo. Bacteria seized to function in this range.


Extreme low PH at 3.55

Fish waste will just remain as it is.


I will need to increase the PH to around 4.5 by adding coral chip piece by piece to slowly increase to my target PH. And as the PH slowly increases you can see the poo slowly disappearing which indicate that the bacteria's are thriving again. Bacteria functions fine at PH above 6, anywhere lower than 6 they struggles.

As the PH increases the fish waste gets lesser.


At PH4.5 all the fish waste are cleared by the bacterias.

My mission is to try and eliminate excessive Ammoniam, Nitrite and Nitrate. I've Pothos in the tank but it doesn't do too well under these extreme conditions. I would need to design a filter that increases the PH inside the filtration for Beneficial Bacteria to thrive and not increase the PH in the main tank. 

9bar tank with slight Ammonium, given that a single 6 inch fish in 120liters of water.

Ammonium of the 20 odd babies in the 120liter tank is not too great, luckily in very low PH ammonium do not poison the fish.

Nitrate of the baby tank is on the high side at 50mg/l

Nitrate of the black tank also at 50mg/l

Ammonium of the black tank, a 6inch fish in 170 liter

These are not great news and I need to address them urgently, I can see the fish has stopped progressing. I do not have anymore space for a bigger tank and I've to improvise. It is either I throw in a bunch of pothos to help eliminate the Nitrogen but knowing my style I will go ahead with my filtration. It is a challenge indeed as we need stagnant water, low DO and low PH. Good luck!





Comments

  1. AfiJune 24, 2021 at 3:11 PM

    Hi,interesting idea there. Have you got any progress for the filtration idea yet?

    ReplyDelete
  2. MoorishJune 29, 2021 at 6:49 PM

    The best I can come up with is a hydroponic filtration system. I'm using terrestrial plants to remove nitrate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paulo MaldonadoJuly 9, 2021 at 9:18 PM

    I use a sump filter ,pH:4,5 with digital control and reactor of aragonite when pH go down…
    NH3: 0
    NO2: 0
    NO3:10
    I use Equilibrium ( Seachem ) to mineralize and Flurish ( Seachem ) everyday to mantain a proper level of trace elements like molibdenium, important for bacterial activity.

    ReplyDelete

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