jamzwayne, Yer backerds (for those who don't speak ohioan that means you're backwards) don't worry some of us are backwards some of the time and most of us are backwards most of the time or something like that.
7.0 being neutral anything above is alkaline, anything below is acidic. All fish have a home environment that is considered ideal. very few fish have trouble acclimating to differnt Ph ranges. Even picky fish such as Discus will live in ph's different from the ideal. In most cases, such as discus, the real issue is the total dissolved solid levels in the water Discus don't like hard water. water with a low TDS usually leans more toward the neutral to acid side of things, and higher tds harder water usually leans toward the alkaline side. There of course are always ways to change and maniplulate this, but these are the general rule for most applications.In the case of lowering PH there are a few differant ways. #1 is t remove the buffers which hold the ph higher i.e. your KH level. the reason peat is mentioned is that it leaches tannins (tannic acid) into the water and eats up the buffer causing the ph to drop It does not drop ph untill the KH is consumed, which makes it very slow, and also makes it somewhat useless if your KH is really high. It does this slowly and therefore doesn't cause the big swings assosciated with other buffering products. In the case of Co2, carbonic acid is created which lowers PH, but does so with minimal impact on KH. With CO2 you can lower the ph while the kh remains steady co2 does deplete the KH eventually, and this is why kh testing is critical when using co2, and why it is necessary to keep a certain kh level in order to prevent ph crashes. In either case when the buffer is gone the water is apt to quickly change ph and that gets dangerous.
I am not familiar with the ph minus procduct itsef. when I played this game years ago, I used Discus buffer by seachem, the product itself does work, but it creates an unstable environment, and therefore allows for a lot of swinging back and forth. in addition these products typically have all kinds of stuff in them that we really don't want in our tanks, not to mention the addition of solids which contribute to the TDS levels and affect our water quality in one way or another. In most cases As I learned years ago, you use the product to eat up your buffer, and then the same product takes the ph on a big swing. then you do a water change to fix that and start the process over. It took me months to figure out how to stabilize the system, in conjunction with water changes, and I spent a lot of money in the process. Never again for me.
As far as your test kit reccomendations to use the products. bear in mind the company that sells the test kit makes a living with these products. They reccomend them to enhance their profits, It doesn't mean they are bad, or good but it also doesn't mean they are necessary. Happy chem or one of the other experts will hopefully correct anything I misstated, and maybe shed some more light on the actual ingredients in these products.
HTH
Dave
