Reef Chemistry and pH

Reef Chemistry and pHWhen it comes to reef chemistry and pH, most people think that the two things are different. Reef chemistry is certainly a bit different than the one found in the human body and just about any other environment out there in the great out-there.Reef chemistry is actually the combination of various chemicals in the water. It's the little bacteria and algae (most often we don't notice) in the water that help to keep things balanced. As you might imagine, the more of these there are, the less alkaline. The more acidic, the more they are.When you're doing something with chemicals and pH levels, a good example would be the stuff they use in fertilizer. Sometimes called 'alkalinity,' that's the name applied to the pH level of the fertilizer being used. A fertilizer of very high alkalinity would tend to make the water very much more acidic than what it already is.It's important to remember that the ideal conditions for reef chemistry and pH are those that are highly alka line. This is because it makes the materials inside the rock work harder. In the natural environment, many things will need to work harder to get the process going, so high alkalinity is definitely needed.It can be surprising how much difference this one simple change can make in the environment. As an example, if you went into a very dry desert and tried to plant a nice garden, you might do OK for a while, but as the plants grew in, it would dry out, and the nutrients you were feeding them wouldn't be as effective. It might be easier, however, to add a source of high alkalinity to the garden in order to make it grow faster. And you might find that the lack of water running through it allowed you to grow food that wouldn't dry out as much.To understand why there's a difference between reef chemistry and pH, it helps to go back to what is usually called pH. pH is actually just the acid and base information in the same way that alkalinity is. So if you add a lot of alkalinity, say ove r ten percent, it should make the water even more acidic, especially with things like fertilizers and water softeners.When it comes to reef chemistry and pH, the best thing to do is to think of it as the work of the symbiotic bacteria and algae. They make the ocean (as well as things we see in the living world), and you can do the same with your reef aquarium.