Ph level and how it affect the saltwater system

Hello there fellow saltwater enthusiasts. I need a quick tutorial on who, what, where, why when is ph. Not only for my own knowledge but also to help out a friend. Here are just a couple of questions I have right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have questions so we can also use this thread to help educate other enthusiasts like me.

Why is ph important?

Is PH a main contributor to algae growth?

 

hmm, I'm not a marine biologist, or even a chemist for that matter but I do know that our fish and corals have evolved to survive in a very small range of pH. Too low and your livestock will suffer. We normally dont see too high of pH in the saltwater hobby unless you get crazy with some kalwasser. I dont really think low pH causes algae growth, but I have heard of maintaining high pH and magnesium to get rid of some algae and dinoflagellates. Hopefully someone will chime in that can explain it in more scientific terms

 

Ph is basic chemistry. Ph ranges from 0 to 14. 7 is neutral and anything below 7 is acidic anything above is basic. Ph is very important to both snails, fish and coral. Of corse the Lower your ph the more devastating. The akalinity of your water is extremely important to the slime coat on your fishes, it's their protection that's why I've and my fish store don't use nets we use containers to capture fish. Ph also affects snails shells over time. I've never had an issue with ph. I currently using a denitrator which is known to mess up ph but I've never experienced a problem. My ph is always between 7.8 and 8.3. More people have much more knowledge on this than me so wait for their posts.

 

pH is not a stable, reliable value to be chasing. Yes, it does show the balance between acidity and alkalinity, which is vitally important; however, that is irrespective of the actual levels. IOW, your cal and alk could both be low (or high) and still have the proper pH balance. To further complicate things, the pH value itself is also easily affected by conditions outside of the acid/alk balance, such as low O2 or high CO2.

That said, an incorrect pH is a good indicator that something is wrong, but one needs to properly test and dose the correct elements rather than dumping pH buffers into their tank.

 

Thanks for the input those of you who replied. Anyone else have more to add??

 

I teach biology (university)... how in depth do you want to get? lol.

As mentioned above, but slightly different... it's not that they have evolved to be in a small pH range, it's that they've never needed to evolve to changing pH. They also have never needed to evolve to swinging temps or dirty water (ocean doesn't build up nitrate for instance). Because of this, ocean fish (and invertebrates) tend to be sensitive to swings in these parameters.

As to the pH specifically, there are many calcifying organisms in the ocean. This requires a higher pH to do. CaCO3 dissolves if the pH drops (drop a bit of acid on limestone if you want to see this to the extreme).

On to some biochemistry, the body's proteins are evolved to operate under rather specific pH levels. In fact, your organelles will at times have different pH values than others which actually help the folding of proteins (there are vacuoles that exist simple to help new proteins fold, proteins that couldn't fold in the intracellular fluid pH).