How do I make Water Softer? and Drop PH?

why do you want to drop your ph?? A stable ph is better than anything. Are you looking to breed some type of fish? You can aclamate (sp?) fish to almost any type of water.

Fully agreed that 8.0 should be fine for almost anything you want to keep with a few very isolated exceptions. The best route IMO is to mix tap water with RO or DI water in order to bring the levels down to your desired target. This will dillute the hardness essentially, you will still not want to get the water too soft, because you end up with low KH. The only other really good way to reduce PH is with CO2. Any other method will only work once the kh is consumed, and a low KH tank is prone to crashes IMO.
dave

depending on what type of filter you have depends on where you put your media but for me in my emporer 400 the secondary media contaners i stock with peat moss and it keeps my ph a 6.6 to 6.8

daveedka said:

Any other method will only work once the kh is consumed, and a low KH tank is prone to crashes IMO.
dave

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Is this true of things like Peat Moss? I was gonna lower my PH to breed my fish however I hadn't heard the KH will get "consumed" .

I have the same question STaNgXs...
If i added water that went through a britta first, would that soften it? I live in florida so all the water has a lot of minirals that get taken with it through the aquafer.

put in a huge chunk of driftwood, the tannens in it leach out, other then that yea if your tank isnt giant mix your tap with jugs of distilled from walmart. but really, ph doesnt matter that much.... i wouldnt worry about fighting with it, remember fish such as platys mollies swordtails and rainbow fish actualy like harder water, or you could get some africans

oztun said:

Is this true of things like Peat Moss? I was gonna lower my PH to breed my fish however I hadn't heard the KH will get "consumed" .

Click to expand...

Yes, essentially peat and or driftwood, will have to reduce/consume the buffer in your tank before it starts lowering Ph. This can be accomplished carefully in a non co2 tank if you want to do it. you essentially have to find the happy medium between stable and desired PH. and then be very dilligent in your maintenance routine so that nothing goes awry. most people contend that low KH isn't an issue with non planted tanks, and I would agree in a well maintained clean tank. However I have seen OTS in several fish only tanks (not my own just for the record) so I am a little wary of low KH set-ups. If I were trying to set up a low PH non planted tank, I would do changes with water in the 1-3 range of KH and keep peat in the filter. I would also monitor closely to make sure I didn' crash the tank with too much acid. peat is slower than most commercial acidifiers which makes it more stable and easier to deal with, it also doesn't add the chemicals and pollutants that the powders do.
Dave

Peat Page : http://hjem.get2net.dk/Best_of_the_Web/peat page.html

Yes, I would leave your water as it is. Stability is the most important thing to have. A pH of 8 is perfectly suitable for most any fish.

As for filtering it through a brita...I'm not to sure, but it wouldn't be economically feasible.....You'd be replacing your filter cartridges left and right!