JBL pH-Minus

JBL pH-Minus lowers the pH in freshwater aquariums, turtle tanks and shrimp tanks. JBL bases it on a natural oak extract and makes a point of it being phosphate-free, which matters because phosphate-based pH products feed algae.

Key Features

• Natural oak extract: JBL's stated active, rather than a mineral acid.
• Phosphate-free: a phosphate-based pH-down product solves one problem and starts another, because phosphate is algae fuel.
• JBL gives the doses: above pH 8, 10ml per 40 litres; between pH 7 and 8, 10ml per 80 litres; below pH 7, do not use it at all.
• Check carbonate hardness first: JBL asks for at least 4 degrees dKH, because below that the pH has nothing holding it steady and will swing.
• Two bottle sizes: 100ml and 250ml.
• Test, then treat: a reading before and after tells you whether the dose did anything. Treating blind is how tanks end up over-dosed.

Changing pH Safely

• Test pH and carbonate hardness before you start, and write the numbers down. You cannot adjust what you have not measured.
• Move slowly, by about a fifth of a pH unit a day. A fast swing is far more dangerous to fish than a pH that is slightly off for their species.
• Dose into a well-circulated part of the tank so it mixes rather than sitting in one place.
• Re-test a few hours later and again the next day before you dose again.
• Most community freshwater fish are quite happy around neutral. Chasing a number from a book is a common way to lose fish.

Good To Know

• Keep the bottle closed, upright and out of direct sun. Heat and light shorten the shelf life of any liquid water treatment.
• Keep it away from children and pets, and do not decant it into a drinks bottle.
• A water conditioner is not a medicine. A fish that is visibly ill needs a diagnosis, not a bottle of conditioner.
• Low carbonate hardness is the real danger. With KH under about 4 degrees the pH can crash overnight, so raise KH first and adjust pH second.
• Treat the water you are adding at a water change as well, or every change pulls the pH back where it started.