Butters

It seems that my tanks have a pH of over 8 as seen in the test tubes. My fish all seem to be fine and not affected by this, or is my test kit just screwy? If anyone lives close to Madison/Milwaukee WI could you tell me what the pH of your tap water is? thanks! one more Q, how important is pH really?

Slug

Stability is the most important aspect. As long as you acclimate the fish to your water and keep it stable, should have no problems.

Butters

thanks slug!

Juand15

also sometimes the test can be screwy, but in case you want to lower it i recommend you to use driftwood and or dried leafs better if they are oak, and if you want to raise it mmm when i used to have Tangayikans i used Baking soda to raise it up.

What do you keep?

Butters

I keep cherry barbs, cories, and a betta now. I will soon be keeping sparkling gouramis in my 10 gallon tank and moving the current inhabitants to my 20 gallon.

Razimith

My ph has never really changed even after I added driftwood. My PH has always been between 8.4-8.6 I was tempted to get some chemicals to reduce my Ph but after reading about pH it is more important that it is just stable. I have had all my fish for about 3 months and they all seem happy as can be.

3 rainbow sharks
pleco
5 neon tetras

Moved my goldfish to another tank but he also seemed fine with the high ph.

sirdarksol

Up here in MN and WI, a lot of our landscape is made out of limestone, and a lot of our water comes from underground aquifers. Rain fills these aquifers, but has to filter through hundreds of feet of limestone to do so. It absorbs calcium (among other things), which raises the pH and provides a buffer (which means adding driftwood or peat won't do anything to change your pH).

DarkRevoultions

PH, is extremely important. Some fishes can with stand the high pH just like yours. Angels, dwarf gouramis, and many other delicate like fishes, need a pH of 6.8-7.0 Although it is rare that if you have angels in your tank with that high amount of pH, that they can survive it.

Although, pH is meaning how acidic the water is.

I believe that if you were to raise fishes, you would need a higher pH, just like yours, but that is because young need that high amount of pH.

Pleco (Hypostomus Plecostomus they can survive at a higher amount of pH.

Although raising plecos are even harder than raising a young 3" pleco. I don't know why, but plecos' are easy to raise when they are older, but when they are still babies, that could be hard.

Also, you can always try and add some live plants, they help neutralize heavy metals, and many other things.

Very few plants in my experimentation has been proven to lower, and raise up the pH to a certain level.

Although most of my plant experiments have just proven to neutralize the chlorine, and gather up heavy metals. Plants need these types to survive too

Fishies-for-me

My ph is sitting right on 8 and I have very healthy glowlight and neon tetras...both of which do best in soft acidic water

sirdarksol

I know folks who live around me who raise angels with no problems. As stated above, my tetras (traditionally low-pH fish) are doing fine in their hard, high-pH tanks.