Paula
Koi Lover
Jul 25, 2006, 12:27 AM
Post #1 of 7
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Best Way to Measure pH?
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I am having trouble determining the pH of my pond water. I have used two color comparison products--the kind where one puts the water into a tube, adds reagent, and compares to a color chart. I find the two I have, difficult to read and awkward to use. I bought a Hanna pH meter. It wasn't waterproof, and when water got inside, naturally, the meter went kaaflooie. I took it back for a replacement. I calibrated the second one, and all seemed well until suddenly it went from reading my pond water at pH 8.6 to reading it at 9.4. Being suspicious (if that word covers screaming "WHAT!!! XZ@**#") of such a violent increase, I put the meter into some white vinegar, and it read the pH of the vinegar at 8.0. I know vinegar is a mild acid, so a meter reading of pH 8.0 tells me the meter is, in a word, whacked. I am currently waiting for calibration solutions which I ordered so I can try to recalibrate the meter.
What have you other pondkeepers out there found to be a reliable method for measuring pond pH. I know some of you will tell me if the pond looks Ok, and the fish seem healthy, not to worry about pH, but I am barely into the second year on a pond built by a nitwit who constructed the pond walls using manmade blocks. The pH has been up to 10.0 on occasion (if you can trust the color comparison tests I have used) and based on the pH readings I get now, I may want to draw and quarter the nitwit for saddling me with perhaps a terminally flawed pond--or at the very least bring socially accepted pressure to bear to force the nitwit to either install a proper liner or coat the surface of the blocks to prevent the leaching of lime into the water.
The Nitwit claims the blocks will eventually stop leaching lime into the water, (he can't tell me if the time for that is weeks, months, years, or decades) and in the meantime he wants me to start adding muriatic acid by the half cupful to bring down the pH. He is unable to tell me how changing the pH that way will look as a day to day water management program, but I don't want to sit next to the pond 24-7 with an HCl dispenser. Not to mention the fact that it sounds like it could be asking for rapid and wide swings of pH. We, the nitwit and I, look at this problem from two very different points of view. My first concern is the well-being of the three koi he dumped into the pond. His first concern is, of course, avoiding, or more accurately, delaying indefinitely, the expense of correcting a problem.
I apologize for the whine about my nitwit-caused problem. I did so only to explain and justify my current need for information about accurate and reliable pH monitoring.
Paula
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. Lets just say you'll be waiting a very, very, very, loooooooooooooooooooooooooong time for the lime to stop leeching. I don't know the terms of your contract with him/her/it, but if it was supposed to be a working KOI pond he isn't finished until it actually works... which does not include adding muratic acid on a daily basis. It needs to be sealed with G4, Sanitred, or something similar if you want healthy Koi any time this decade. 
) 
, I thought dipstick might be nitwit's brother when I first started reading your last post... but then I realized you weren't talking about a dip$#!^
after all. Just plain old litmus paper. Boy do I feel better.
Maybe you could offer him a nice foot bath in lye water and give HIM a bottle of ACID to make it feel all better when his feet turn red and raw from all that nice caustic water