tap ph swings. use a buffer?

Good gracious! You really did mean "eggs". Like powdered eggs? Not a typo, after all...Where does this idea come from? Perhaps you detect a sulfur smell? I'm hornswoggled.

All my careful explanation... eggs! The mind reels! (diminishing Professor Frink noises, with the gasping and the mumbling and the fading away...)
 
lol yes, honest to goodness eggs. I don't think they would be dumb enough to put sulfur into a fish tank and still say it is non-toxic. *shudders at the thought*
 
You're right. Very little elemental sulfur in a fish tank. Lots of the oxidized form, sulfates (no smell: SO4). Also more sulfides (such as hydrogen sulfide: H2S) than we usually think. Sulfur is built into many organic molecules, like proteins, etc. After "c.h.o.n." carbon hydrogen oxygen nitrogen, sulfur is the next most common element in biochemistry.

But sulfur has kept that "hellfire brimstone" connotation that still makes folks shudder at the thought.

But how could there be "eggs" in "Proper pH 7.0?" I guess that would be Trade Secret #1!
 
I'm not very good at science but maybe eggs mixed with certain things help to create a special pH of 7.0 ? lol! I really do not know but I now have 7 happy fish swimming in it so I guess it's working quite fine. It's slowly becoming 7.2 now but the change is so gradual that it has not affected my fish at all!
 
one of the reasons that I wanted to keep the ph at a even 7.2 and not higher is that since the ph has risen I may as well throw out my plants cause they aren't growing at the elevated ph and now i have a tank of very nice looking algea. not exactly what I am going for.

the suggestions of using rainwater are nice in theory, but it only rains 12 to 15 inches a year here. I am considering getting water for my tanks at a friends house who has the more neutral watershed water source year round in stead of the aquifer water that is so hard and high ph. I have not checked the parameters of that water source through the summer months but I am sure that each water source is consistent. so if you can make a choice of where your water comes from in this area you can have the soft planted tank and the rift valley tank without doing much to the water. however I do not have much say in where the water district gets it's supply and have to deal with alternating rift valley and soft water.

so much for tailering the fish you keep to the water parameters you have. unless of course you know of a fish that morphs between apisto like and shell dwellers acording to the water conditions then I would be set:D
 
one other question!!!! is registering nitrate in the tap water normal? that would explain why the plants didn't seem to notice whether there were fish in the tank if i continued to change water. but isn't that a problem as far as drinking it goes. I am already done growing so I don't think that I need to be fertilized.:p
 
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