Ph up to 8

[ClockworkParrot]

EDIT: I dont know how to edit the thread topic but I had someone else look at the kit in a different room and it ends up the color is on 7.8. The lighting my house is such a pain it makes it hard to tell the colors on the kit sometimes. Its still going up though and I dont know why but I believe from reading that this is a safe range.

Every three days I have been testing my water since I am trying to get a cycle going and I found that my ph has gone up from around 7.4 to 7.8 today and I am wondering what could have caused that jump. I just changed around a third of the tank water today and have been changing out a portion of the water around every other day to make sure the ammonia doesnt keep going up.

The rest of the readings:
Ammonia: .5
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates: 0

The only thing I could think was 3 days ago I was setting some driftwood I got from an aquarium store where I eventually wanted it to go. I had boiled it (for a good 6 hours) already and was keeping in clean water to leach the tanins out. It was only in there for a couple of hours though before I pulled it back it. I thought driftwood was supposed to lower ph though.

 

[rachel1]

Sometimes water straight from the tap will have odd pH readings. If you just did a large water change, that could throw off your values. I find that there is a significant difference in pH readings on water right out of my tap and the same water a few hours later, once it has had time to "settle " and stabilize chemically. Probably it is related to dissolved gasses in my tap water, but you might find your water chemistry is like mine. Usually driftwood lowers pH, so that is unlikely to be the cause. And a pH of 7.8 isn't really cause for concern.

 

[layna]

Im not sure if your doing a fish in cycle or not, if you have no living creatures in the tank, you dont need to change any water whilst cycling. As you have no nitrite and no nitrate your cycle hasnt even really started yet
I would advise you to keep your axies in a seperate tub (changing 100% water daily) and do a fishless cycle, then you can wack the ammonia up to 4ppm and your cycle should get going quicker.
Alternatly you could use some media from a tank that is already cycled and add it to the filter of the tank your trying to cycle, that will save a lot of time in the process.
Now ph, although its on the higher end of the scale, ph goes up and down whilst cycling a tank.
When i first was cycling my tanks, my ph dropped to around 5 but once my tank had cycled it evened out to around 7ish, then i just used to crushed coral to raise it a little higher
as long as there is no immediate danger for your axies, i wouldnt worry too much