# Root Tabs & ph



## Lee Murray (19 Jul 2019)

*Hi, I've posted another thread detailing how my giant hair grass is melting on me but all my other plants are fine, well I've just noticed that my cryptos have also started melting, now I know they are known to do this when 1st put into a tank and they did but that was a few months back and most of them recovered from that and were doing great........until now. The only thing I can point to that has happened in my tank is that I put root tabs in 5 days ago and my ph has dropped from 6.8 to 6.4, not a big drop admittedly but the ph in my other tank has also dropped from 7.2 to 6.8 and this is the 2nd time I have used the tabs and the 2nd time this has happened. Anybody else had a problem with root tabs and ph and does anyone think it could be the reason my cryptos are dying?
Cheers guys
Lee*


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## jms127 (20 Jul 2019)

Do you live in the soft water part of Devon? If so, you could find your pH fluctuating quite a bit anyway with little to buffer it. You could try boosting your GH a bit to see if that helps, if so. I don't see how the root tabs could negatively effect your plants unless they were bad in some way. Have you increased the light intensity at all? In soft water the pH is less meaningful. I would be more inclined to think this is a nutrient deficiency including co2/excess light of some sort. Crypts can be a bit melty until they put on some mass then they are much more robust. They are not all easy to grow either, some can be a right pita.


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## X3NiTH (20 Jul 2019)

Its a KH effect (GH on its own doesn't affect pH) either disturbing the substrate allowed it to absorb more KH (ignore this if it's an inert substrate) or the disturbance plus the increase in nutrients (?Ammonia component Nitrate fertiliser) caused a bacterial bloom that ate some KH, or the plants were really hungry for something missing and they ate the KH as a side dish.


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## X3NiTH (20 Jul 2019)

Just to be completionist after thinking about this a little more.

If you dosed the tabs to both tanks (both experiencing the same pH drop) then it could be that the tabs have an acid component that caused the pH drop to drop a little. However if only one got dosed with fert tabs and they still both experienced the same pH drop (providing your method of determining pH is accurate) then it can only be an increase in dissolved CO₂ in the tanks dropping the pH, the ambient CO₂ levels must have risen to do this, has ventilation reduced in the room so that the ambient CO₂ can rise above atmospheric levels.


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## Lee Murray (23 Jul 2019)

jms127 said:


> Do you live in the soft water part of Devon? If so, you could find your pH fluctuating quite a bit anyway with little to buffer it. You could try boosting your GH a bit to see if that helps, if so. I don't see how the root tabs could negatively effect your plants unless they were bad in some way. Have you increased the light intensity at all? In soft water the pH is less meaningful. I would be more inclined to think this is a nutrient deficiency including co2/excess light of some sort. Crypts can be a bit melty until they put on some mass then they are much more robust. They are not all easy to grow either, some can be a right pita.



Hi, the water here is supposedly moderately soft, the light in both tanks has been the same since I bought them, 2x T8 tubes in the 340L and 2 x 24watt pl lamps 10000K + 3 Blue LEDs for night viewing in the 90L. Had a look at my crypt roots yesterday and they're looking pretty good, I have now set up a small 20L tank with Tropics plant substrate in and put a few of the dodgiest looking plants in there, the starnge thing about my giant hair grass is that there's one last clump that is showing no signs of dying whatsoever. I dose daily with Easycarb and EI salts.


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## Lee Murray (23 Jul 2019)

X3NiTH said:


> Just to be completionist after thinking about this a little more.
> 
> If you dosed the tabs to both tanks (both experiencing the same pH drop) then it could be that the tabs have an acid component that caused the pH drop to drop a little. However if only one got dosed with fert tabs and they still both experienced the same pH drop (providing your method of determining pH is accurate) then it can only be an increase in dissolved CO₂ in the tanks dropping the pH, the ambient CO₂ levels must have risen to do this, has ventilation reduced in the room so that the ambient CO₂ can rise above atmospheric levels.



Hi, I use the API test kits which are, (hopefully), pretty accurate. Both tanks were dosed and ventilation in both rooms has been pretty much the same, a few weeks of hot weather here so windows have been open daily.


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