Plants, onyx sand & PH in a small tank

[superjohnny]

This thread might be better suited in the General Freshwater forum, but it will be planted so I dunno.

Tank #2 issue:
I bought this groovy little Eclipse system 6 from petco.com for $45. Steal I thought. I have about 3" of Onyx sand (roughly 15lbs) because I thought it would look really good (and it does ). I heard about a slight buffering capacity of onyx sand, but gee wiz folks my ph is really high. My PH kit reads up to 7.4 and it seems a quite a bit bluer than the darkest blue on the chart. How should I counteract this high ph?

This tank will go in my office at work so CO2 is a bit much. I'm going to plant it with anubis, java fern & java moss. How will they react to the high ph?

KH = 40ppm
GH = 60ppm
ammonia = 0
PH > 7.4

It currently does not have any fish in it. Would it be better to just find fish that like very basic water?

Thanks folks

 

[famman]

Check the pH of your office water, it might be different. Some cool cichlids love high pH in the 8 to 9 range, like apistogramma. I'd go with a fish that matches your pH.
good luck

 

[Sumpin'fishy]

I know you've been around and I've seen that you know pretty well what you are talking about Famman, so I'm assuming that you just made a mistake. Maybe you meant Tropheus or something? Apistogramma species like soft acid water. You need water well below 7.0 (better below 6.0) to breed them at all!

 

[superjohnny]

I just planted it with an anubis nana, 2 large java fern and some java moss. I think it will fill in really nicely. I'm going to let it establish itself as a planted tank before I add fish. Maybe a few weeks.

I'll post a pic a bit later on.

 

[famman]

Sumpin'fishy,

Ah yeah, right. I was thinking shell dwellers and apistogramma came out for some reason. Thanks for the heads up.