Treat the ammonia with an Amquell or Chlor-AmX product, the nitrite with
some salt, then bring up your buffer/KH with baking soda. Decreasing pH
using an acide decreases the buffer, so you end up playing a balancing act.
I think getting it to 6.6 is not a realistic goal. Now 8.4 with buffer at
100-150 is realistic.

High pH, above 8.5 is very likely why you're having an algae bloom. Higher
plant forms can not take up the nutrients like some variety of algae can
(and there is always a variety of algae that can survive what ever
condition water is in) when pH is above 8.4. It gets more difficult for
higher plant forms at 8.0 and harder as it goes up to darn near impossible
once over 8.5. Similar with pH is low 6.5 and under. ~ jan

On 10 Jun 2004 18:44:29 -0700, (Greg Costanzo) wrote:

Well it happened..a few nice days of crystal clear water .... and
bam.... now i have a lovely algae bloom. I would like to get rid of
it some how -- so it looks like a "clean" pond but yet I'd also like
to make sure it's an ecosystem (balanced!!) so I'm hesitant to put in
a UV sterilizer to kill away all algae. My nitrate/nitrite levels are
low (0.1 mg/mL nitrite // under 5 mg/L nitrate); KH is about 50 ppm;
ammonia levels are well under 0.6 mg/L; and lastly, but what could be
the problem, my pH skyrocketed from last week being nearly 8.5 pushing
almost close to nine. I am currently lowering my pH to about 6.6 but
as you all probably know I have to do this 0.5 per day so I don't
stress my fish out (I only have two koi).

Should lowering my pH help out or what else can I do so i have clear
but natural water??? (natural meaning a healthy amount of algae not a
green mess!)


Thank you all... this google group thing is probably the best
invention anyone has come up with :-) take care!!


~ Greg

(Do you know where your water quality is?)