MelissaF

I tested my water last night and my tank was reading
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0 ppm
And pH 8.0

I know this is a very high pH. Does anybody have good recommendations on how to lower it.

Shawnie

I would give ANYTHING to have my amonia at 0!! awesome job... if there are no buffers in your water, aka chlorine etc, do a lil bit of awater change..that doesnt seem to hurt anything...some fish like the high ph tho..what kind of fish do you have?...im a newbie but ive read so much here..goodluck and im sure others will have a much more detailed answer...

SereneReyn

i would absolutely not use any chemicals to lower your Ph... most fish can tolerate a less than ideal Ph, but not fluctuations that would be inevitable with chemicals. you could however add some driftwood, that might lower it a tiny bit, but would be pretty gradual too.

sirdarksol

Excellent advice from Serene and a good question from Shawnie (what fish do you have/plan on having?)

I have high pH, and until I can get myself a rain barrel, I'm just not messing with it. There are some fish that prefer acidic water (tetras being the first things that come to mind), but as long as you acclimate them slowly (start them out with only their own water in a container, and slowly add water, maybe a quarter cup every 15 minutes, over an hour or so. I do this in a separate container. Many people do it with the bags floating.) and as long as the pH remains stable, they should be fine.
If you don't yet have fish, guppies, mollies, and African cichlids all do well in high pH water.

MelissaF

Excellent. I have a pleco right now. I unfortunatley learned about the ammonia cycle after I got fish and lost all of them but him. I also unfortunately have put in CYCLE due to the LFS advise (learned the errors of my ways since then). Since the cycle is so far I don't want to stop using it and start over. but I'll know better for next time. When my nitrate levels come up I was thinking of a gourami, mollies and possibly a cichlid though I thought they were really really aggressive.

Whats a rain barrel?

sirdarksol

A barrel that collects rain.
Rain water doesn't have much in the way of minerals in it, so it is pretty neutral in pH and low in hardness. It's easier to play with its pH in this way (like using peat to lower the pH)

Shawnie

wow sir I didnt know that..ima still a lernin!

SereneReyn

i was under the impression that rain water (at least in cities) can have pollutants or other bad stuff in it though (and that's why you're not advised to drink rain water), that's inaccurate? thanks for the insight, sir!

sirdarksol

My take on it is this:
There's stuff everywhere that we shouldn't be taking in. The ground water near me contains chemicals that were by-products of 3M production processes. Minnesota is high in coal content, which means that there's always the possibility that there's a small amount of mercury in the ground water. Likewise, the rain ends up as the groundwater in the long run, as it seeps back into the ground.
So what I'll probably do is collect a barrelfull of rainwater, then have a sample of it tested to see what we're looking at for toxins.

FL CommunityFans

Rain water here would kill a fish. We have 3 plants within just a few miles of us, and the water is very acidic when it comes down.

edit: and to give you an idea on our water qualities.. we have several SUPERFUND sites in the county. Several pockets of places have high cancer rates in the animals such as dogs, cats etc (common pets) and they are noticing it in adults who have lived in the area since they were children. Hooray for pollution I guess

Allie

Put in real driftwood in that should help lower your ph.

sirdarksol

Driftwood and peat will only lower the pH if there aren't a lot of buffers in the water. If it's hard water, which is what I've got near me, the tannins have to first get through the buffer, which takes a lot of time and tannins.
It took me forever to figure this out. People would say that driftwood will lower the pH, and I'd look at my tanks that have a ton of driftwood in them, and whose water was brown with the tannins, and my pH would still be close to 8. I then found out more about the buffers.

ER9

i asked the same question at a local fishstore. the guy there has an amazing shop with some really beautifull aquariums. i have 7.8ph water out of the tap and wanted to lower it so i could keep a few rummie noses. he gave me a product (white powder), i will post the name of it when i get home. he uses it in his discus tanks to buffer the water and lower the ph. with each application it lowers the ph approx .2, seems to happen over 24 hour period. he also said that even with 25% water changes the ph will change no more than .2

i have had a very hard time adjusting my ph in the past. i did one treatment the day before yesterday and was pleased to see my ph drop by .2 the next afternoon. good stuff.

just got home. the powder is called Discus Buffer and its made by Seachem.

MelissaF

great I'm going to look for that thanks

hssea

my well water is 8.0 ph and all my fish do fine. They range from 2-5 years old. The store which i buy them from has very acidic water , i acclimate them in their bags very slowly. over ten years ago i tried adjusting ph, it is very unstable and had many fish lost to this, besides being such a hassle. Hard water has a very stable ph so feel lucky.

MelissaF

My tap water is 7.4. I just did a water change though so I'm going to check my readings again tonight. It might just be my tank cycling and maybe my tank will restabalize itself. My fish seems to be doing fine, I'm just afriad of it going up more.

Tavel

I'd like to point out that rain water is NOT neutral. It's actually very far from neutral with a pH of around 5.8 (varies depending on location and other variables). It also has no buffers, so the pH can fluctuate wildly once it gets into a system...like say an aquarium.

Pure water is very acidic, and tastes terrible. bleh.

kra-z-fishmumm

Yep,,, went through the whole "let's get that pH down to 7.6 or lower" only to loose a few fish each time (normal for my well water is 7.8-8.0). acclimating them very slowly is the best and they seem to adjust. my