Very low pH - what could be the cause?

O

Oare

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Hello everyone,

I have a fully cycled tank with good nitrite & nitrate parameters, solid GH as well.

But carbonate is pretty much non-existent and pH hovers dangerously low around 6.4.

I have already added some coral in the filter, to no avail.

The aquarium is quite planted, so my initial guess was that plants were spitting all the CO2 at night and this was in part what caused these pH levels.
I have an air pump, so I set a timer to turn off the air pump during the day and on only at night, but this did not have any impact.

I use fine sand as the plant substrate. There are a bunch of river stones.

There is also a bit of coconut shell which could be a contributing factor (perhaps even my main culprit?)

What would be the best course of action to try and slowly bring the pH back up?
Remove the coconut, or take out some of the plants? Is there something else at play here and that I'm not seeing?

Thank you in advance for your help.

(edit: here is a bonus pic of Jonmi who grew up quite a bit already since arriving here! Getting more and more convinced they are a girl although it is still too early to tell for sure I think?)
 
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So about 12 hours after removing the coconut, not much has changed. I did a water change immediately after removing it, but the pH is still steadily laughing at me at 6.4.
I'm going to wait 12 more hours and see.
Jonmi has appetite and appears normally active (no erratic behavior).

I guess it is the plants.

I'm going to try and add more coral, wait a week while doing daily water changes and see if things change for the better. If I see no improvement, I'll remove some of the plants!

Edit: wait, thinking about it, turning on the pump at night and off during the day might be doing exactly the opposite of what I want?
I think I would be better off letting CO2 build up during the night and be consumed during the day? But I don't want to risk suffocation either.

I'll leave the pump off altogether tonight and report back tomorrow.
 
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