Ph Stuff

[Zeoth]

Ok. I know that to make your eater hard u add rocks such as lime stone etc. But wat if u want to make ur water soft. Wat do u add?

 

[fishlette]

Ok. I know that to make your eater hard u add rocks such as lime stone etc. But wat if u want to make ur water soft. Wat do u add?

wood is the best i believe

 

[three-fingers]

Bogwood is good, it releases tannins which will lower the pH and simulate the natural environment of many soft water fish.
However if you don't soak it first to remove a lot of the tannins, the water could start to look like tea, and this is not to everyone's taste (I like it, the more natural the better).

You should also look into Indian almond leaves and black water extract. Try to avoid chemicals like 'pH down'.

If your water is too hard and alkaline out of the tap, and whatever method your using to lower the pH isnt working, you may want to try RO water, which costs money to buy from your lfs when you need to do a water change or you could make your own using an RO unit (not exactly cheap, but worth it if you really want to keep certain species). RO water is soft and neutral, so things like bog wood have a big affect on it.

Lots of captive bred fish that like acidic water are adapted to more alkaline water nowadays too, but they still prefer it alkaline acidic.

For example angel fish, come form soft acidic water in South America, but I have known them to do OK in water as high as pH 8.
On the other hand, as soon as I lowered the pH in that tank down to 6.5, the were so happy the started to breed.

 

[rdd1952]

Peat in the filter will also lower pH. Here is a good article on pH, KH & GH.

 

[GoldLenny]

Peat Moss in your filter reservoir will work too! Just monitor it closely and do not lower the pH too much, too fast. Maybe 0.1 per day to give the fish a chance to slowly acclimate to the changing pH.

 

[Bignose]

Maybe 0.1 per day to give the fish a chance to slowly acclimate to the changing pH.

Where did you come up with that number? Controlling pH down to the tenths digit is almost an impossible task using just peat moss. What I mean is, unless you are using a computer controlled CO2 injector, controlling the pH is a fool's errand. The best you can do is experiment/guess how much peat will be needed and see what comes out.

Not only that, fish can adapt to changes in pH much faster than we give them credit for. For example, if you track the pH in most ponds/rivers/lakes in nature, the pH changes a lot during the day. Typically, a change of around 1.5 to 2.0 pH units a day, with some lakes changing 3 or even 4 units. And the fish live just fine in nature. Your fish do not have to be slowly acclimated at the rate of 0.1 pH units a day. If you bring home a fish from the LFS and it's water is significantly different that your own, a drip method for a few hours to change pH is fine, but 0.1 pH units a day is overkill. I've got a post on this forum from some time back that showed some conservative cacluations that a fish can change it's pH over 1 unit per hour -- I can dig it up later if you'd like.

But, to summarize, contorlling a change of 0.1 pH units a day is an almost task, and definately overkill. Your fish will adapt.

Now, back to the OP, I think that the real question at hand is, why do you want to change your pH? What species do you want to keep? What are your current water stats? The reasons I ask is because a great majority of the fish at your LFS are not going to be exceptionally picky about their pH and hardness stats. Many, many of the species available today are going to adapt to almost whatever water you have and live very long, healthy lives in a vast majority of the tap water available today. And, since changing pH is a difficult task, and since you will rob your water of its buffering capability to do it, which means you will have to watch the pH like a hawk since your water isn't buffered, it really becomes an extra hassle that may really not need to be a hassle. So, answer my questions about what species you want to keep and your current water and maybe you won't even need to do anything.