Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My tank has been cycling for about 4 weeks. I have live rock and a refugium with macro algae I have done daily water quality tests and I have gone through my ammonia spike and nitrate spike. They have been at 0 and 1 respectively and my pH has been at 8.2 for 2 1/2 weeks now and there have been 5 fish in there for 2 weeks too. Yesterday I tested again still 0 and 1 but my pH jumped to 8.5ish. I feed the fish every other day, alternating flake and enriched brine.

Any ideas what may have caused the jump?

I am also using a buffer to return the pH. Should I be doing anything different?

That's not too big of a jump. As long as your fishes' pH preference is still being met, everything should be fine. Fish can handle small increases or decreases in most water parameters.

You can use the pH adjusters (I usually just do water changes unless the pH is a 1.0 difference or more because I like to keep my tanks as natural as possible). I would add the pH adjuster to a separate container containing the tank's water and then add that to the tank... just to be on the safe side.
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Phishie
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"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."