Water Softener/PH lowerer/raiser/balancer safe for plants and fish?

[RTR]

Save your money from the water additives and invest instead in a 10 gallon tank for QT, plus a small internal filter that you can conceal in your main tank until it is needed, and a matching heater. When you buy new fish, use main tank water to fill the QT, add a thin layer of gravel and a couple of plastic plants, move the filter in, plug in the heater, and you are in business. Adding fish without QT is guaranteed to mess up your main tank. Especially new small fish such as Neons.

Maintain them in isolation for a minimum of 4 healthy weeks - any disease or loss restarts the clock. The rest of your fish and you tank will thank you.

 

[mrkeeg]

As a follow up to my comment about peat, I did a bit of an experiment.

Quite a while ago I did some testing with peat in my hard, alkaline well water, and found that soaking a lot of peat in a cup of water, or even pouring boiling water through a netfull of peat had a rather small effect on pH - a few tenths.

Just this afternoon I mashed some of my cheap garden center peat into some fresh rainwater and let it sit an hour or so. This took the water from pH 7.2 or so, to somewhere around 6.

Though I used way more peat than you ever really would in a tank situation, this demonstrates that it can be very effective in reducing pH, and also demonstrates what a difference there is between the relatively unbuffered rainwater, and the highly buffered well water.

As a further side note (I'm on a roll now), one fellow I know claims that a good amount of peat in his filter is good for his plants, both for the natural acids and tannins it adds, but also because the slow breakdown of it results in net addition of CO2 to his tank.

Take it as you like!

Keegan

 

[mtaurone]

I am in agreement about the futility of chasing the pH. It sounds as though you may have problems more basic than the pH issue. Given the time you had the tank set up it may be that you are in the middle of the cycle of ammonia to nitrite and nitrate. I would test for all three of these and if any one of them is elevated that may be the explanation for your neons and cardinals dying. Cardinals especially are very sensitive to nitrate. Ammonia and nitrite will kill your fish no matter what species. Many species are very tolerant of nitrate but will reach a point where they will suddenly die without any other cause apparent. Ideally you should do water changes such that your nitrate level stays below 30 ppm. For my water changes I set up a system where a flow going out is matched by flow coming in with a digital thermometer making sure that temperature does not change by more than 2° up or down. I run that for one hour on a 40 gallon tank and that does a very nice job weekly. I hope this is helpful. And I wish someone would answer my thread about the CO2 infusion.

 

[mtaurone]

I will also add that at the end of my water change I add Kordon AmQuel Plus Ammonia Detoxifier and Kordon AmQuel Plus Ammonia Detoxifier. This eliminates the chlorine and seems to keep the fish happy.