Cheapest place to buy driftwood or other Ph ideas?

I have had my 30 gallon for a few months now and have yet to have any problems. It used to be gravel and I recently changed to a sand substrate so that I could plant some plants. Not because I like an aquascape but because my pH is WAY up in like the 8.0 area straight from my faucet. I need to figure out a way to get the pH down and keep it down on a very VERY tight budget. I have looked for local wood all over but have not found anything suitable and not with sap. I was wondering if anyone could please point me in an area to and type of tree to look for for good solid driftwood or a website that sells driftwood at a good price. Everything I see is either too expensive or is so in the raw that it would be useless for me to buy it because if I am gonna do that much work to prepare it I mind as well find my own piece. Any advice on how to get my pH down and keep it down will be appreciated. Also when I do a water change I'm just putting high pH water back in my tank. Anyone had this problem and if so do you have any pointers? P.S - if you need to know my fish, plants, or paramaters it is all in my profile btw

 

Why do you need to lower your pH? Most commercially-raised fish can easily adapt to higher pH water. I remember seeing someone write on this forum that he bred angelfish and raised fry in 8.0 water. I keep my own Angelfish, German Blue Rams, Celestial Pearl Danios, African Butterfly cichlids, Pearl Gouramis, Cardinal tetras, and other 'soft water species' in water straight from the tap, even though the water is very basic (7.8-8.0) and hard. If everything's going well, why bother shaking things up? You're more likely to kill your fish with constant pH swings when you do big water changes.

That said, if you're dead set on getting driftwood/bogwood, I'll let you in on a little secret: I get all of my wood from either Petco or Petsmart.

In the reptile section, these stores generally have a nice selection of Malaysian driftwood, MopanI bogwood, and Grapvine (ew). The stores only sell the wood for around $12-20, which is incredibly affordable, considering the size of the pieces. To prepare, all I've done is soak the wood in a bucket of hot (not boiling, it can pop the fibers) water, dumping the water every day. When the water becomes a light brown after a day of soaking, that's when I decide that it's good to go.

You'd have to worry about doing large water changes, though. If you change more than 30%, you run the risk of altering the pH too much and killing all your fish, depending on how long ago you did your last wc.

 

Thanks I really haven't had much of a problem at all yet but I my test strips and my read out when I get my water said danger on the pH section so that word always makes me wanna get a plan on how to fix it and that's what I have heard does but I guess that makes a heck of a lot more sense it would probably hurt more than help to get it down. But thanks for the tip and I really wanna get angelfish when I upgrade so that's good to know for the future.

 

I get most of my wood off Amazon. I WISH I could buy it locally, but it's expensive for the limited selection.

 

You probably have heard about it, but Peat Moss is a very easy, and cheap way. I use it in my 30 gallon, and pH dropped to 6.5 in bout 5 hours. I bought some off of amazon, since no one was selling where I lived. Just make sure it's 100% Peat Moss, so you don't kill your fish. I got my bag for $8.50.
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I bought my Driftwood, from amazon for 9$, but it might be a gamble, some people get lucky, and some people need to return it.
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