How do I lower my pH?

RazzleFish

RazzleFish

AC Members
Oct 28, 2009
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Hello!
It's been a LONG time since I've posted here and I have a question that I have not been able to find a good responce to so I am back. So first off I'll start with the tank:
20 Gallon Tall-
8 White Skirt Tetras
moderatly planted with:
Dwarf Sag
Crypt wendtii
Crypt crispatula (sp)
Java Fern
Java Moss

pH at least 8.4!!!!!!

So I am going to leave the other tanks out of this for now. So I was doing a water change on that tank and just beacuse, I decided to test the pH. Before I changed the water it was a nice, stable 7.2. After I changed the water (75%) it shot up to 8.4! So i started freaking out thinking my fish are going to die right in front of my so I tested the water out of the tap...... OFF THE CHART!!!!!!! (>8.8) So I don't know why or how my tap water went up from 7.2 two weeks ago to >8.8 now, but i know it probably won't go down anytime soon so I started looking for was to lower the pH. So this is where my question comes in. I will not use any chemicals to lower the pH so the only alternatives I've found have been driftwood (which works well on another tank) and peat moss. Since the tank is rather small, I look up peat moss here. Well bringing in my other fish (Dwarf cichlids, corys, platies, barbs and mollys) from the other tanks, I want at most a pH of 7. So is there a way to use peat to lower the pH without staining my water? Will activated carbon reverse or hinder the effects of the peat? I am not trying to breed my fish but I like knowing that I am offering them something close to life in the wild and since I will be setting up a columbian basin biotope soon I want low, low, low pH.

Thank You Ver Much
~Razz
 
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Our PH in our town is ridiculously high too. Perfect for livebearers, but kills tetras. I would dump tons and tons of pH down or other pH drop stuff into my tank and nothing would work. I just started buying the 2.5g plastic jugs of "drinking water" from Walmart for all of my water changes. If you go this route be sure to get the "drinking water" and not the "spring water". The drinking water is just RO water. Before, when I used tapwater and dumped a bunch of pH down into the water my neons would die off at a rate of one a day. I started doing the Walmart jugs of water last year and haven't lost a neon in over a year.
 
Well that will be something to consider. What is the pH of RO water usually?
 
Around neutral depending on the efficiency.

Did you by chance test the pH of the tap after letting it sit out for 24 hours or so? Dissolved CO2 in the water will off gas and cause the pH to rise.

I've kept various "soft water" fish in water with a pH around 8.2-8.4 and never had issues but never kept tetras myself. Knowing the GH and even KH of the water would make more of a difference. Your livebearers love this type of water anyways.

But if you are truly going for the biotope for the cichlids, corys, and tetras than mixing some tap with RO might save some money in the long run for a smaller tank.
 
No it was straight from the tap. I tested my tank water again and it's back down to 7.2 which, in my mind, makes the situation worse. At least we can lower the pH once but if it shoots up the crashes back to normal it has to be horrible for the fish, right? So is there a way to keep it from shooting up in the first place?
 
Oh, and as of now I don't have either a GH or KH test..........
 
Alrighty, so I am assuming that the next step in resolving the problem would be to get GH and KH tests. As of now my fish seem fine but I am more concerned about it becomming an issue with my rams and the apistogrammas that will go into my next tank sometime soon.
 
I would, personally. I had rams in the water I spoke of and again I have pretty hard water that is fairly high in TDS.

Getting good stock (local breeder or imported NOT from Asia) will ensure they do well in water outside of what most people think they need to have...there are plenty of reports of rams breeding in hard water. Not so sure about the apistos though myself.
 
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