pH acidifier alternatives?

D

Diamond

Registered Member
Sep 4, 2004
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Can anyone recommend a safe way to effectively reduce the pH in my tank? It's a 55 gal. hexagonal with 4 medium angels, 2 barbs (non-aggressive), 2 Z-danios, 2 large silver-dollars, and a few other tetras and a pleco..We lost 1/3 of the tank a few weeks ago and did a massive cleaning. All but a glass catfish survived, but I can't get the pH below 7.5. I've used most of a bottle of a commercial pH-down product (slowly, over 8-10 days) with virtually no results. Bad bottle of product? I hate to keep adding chemicals. Anything else I can use? Thanx.....
 
It's probably not the ph. Try not to mess around with it. If you have a high ph, you're very likely to have a high kh as well. Which means it's gonna take a lot to bring it down. I have even higher ph the that and my fish are fine. It's a lot better to have stable ph. Swinging phs put fish in great stress. Not only that just because you put in a bottle this time and got it down doesn't mean thats it. You have to keep adding the stuff at every change of water.

I would think maybe your stocking levels are too high. You may be over crowded. What are your water parameters? How long has the tank been up?
 
Whatever you do DO NOT use Ph chemicals. They screw up the water bad and are more harmfull than a tank with the wrong Ph. I heard of people putting peat moss in there filters as a safe Ph decreaser. Driftwood also might decrease Ph aswell.

-Dan
 
I would stay away from the ph chemicals as well. they only lead to water fluctuations. having a stable ph and kh is the most important thing, not having it be "right"
 
SomeGuy88 said:
Whatever you do DO NOT use Ph chemicals. They screw up the water bad and are more harmfull than a tank with the wrong Ph. I heard of people putting peat moss in there filters as a safe Ph decreaser. Driftwood also might decrease Ph aswell.

-Dan
Click to expand...


Fully agreed with all responses so far, Ph reducers are a nightmare, in many different cruel and unusual ways. I used to play that game years ago, and it is brutal for the hobbyist, and not much good for the fish either.
7.5 should be a great level, that is lower than most of us have. With a low Kh you can lower PH with peat or Driftwood (shorterm for the wood) as said. But the only real good way is with Co2. Peat and driftwood are inneffective until they have reduced or consumed your KH, therefore if you have high KH they are difficult or maybe even useless. Co2 will lower the PH while the Kh is still at a good level, and thus is effective, but in all honesty as said your PH shouldn't be a problem at all. Mine is at 7.8-8.0 without Co2 and all of my fish except one are from neutral to acidic origins.
Dave
 
Diamond

Thanks to all for the advice. (You can see that I'm a new member.) Put some of that neutralizer granular stuff in before I heard from you and it's around 7.4 - 7.5 so I think I'll leave well enough alone. As an experiment, I pH tested 3 other H2O sources - tap, bottled (local) and Arrowhead bottled and they EACH came out at least 7.6! Tank is 3 1/2 yrs old; a few fish are original; but as I said, we did a fairly radical cleaning 2 wks ago. Nobody else seems in great distress at the moment (knocked on wood!), so may do a partial water change sometime this week. Thanks again for the input...
 
just as a footnote NEVER use wardley bullseye products...they don't work at all for altering pH so you basically end up dumping needless chemicals into your tank. not cool.
 
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