Tap Water Low Ph

[Disky]

evening all,

Tank is up and running, got some corys, platinum mollies and some gold dust mollies with 10 very small neon tetras

Checked water quality,, all bang on a few days ago.. but checked it today after a water change and the ph had dropped to 6.2.

~Checked tap water to see if that was ok and it was also 6.2ph. i thought it would have been 7 as thats what i had in previous house which is served by the same water supply.

only thing i can think of is perhaps the pipes coming to the house are different and affecting the ph.

I dont want to mess about with the water, but it would be nice to get the water stable around 7

Any suggestions ?

and yes, there is 1 bit of bogwood in it

 

[eli3000]

bogwood lowers ph, just get some ph raiser from petsmart or petco. make sure to add a little bit at a time or you could put your fish into shock

 

[Proxo]

Possible the water company has done something to lower the pH and it could go back up? I dont know, just a thought

 

[the_lock_man]

There's nothing wrong with a pH of 6.2, cories and neons are naturally found in acidic pH. The mollies may struggle though - livebearers generally come from water with a high pH, and can struggle in lower pH water.

I would recommend against using a pH-adjusting chemical - if it doesn't work properly, or you do something wrong with it, you can cause the pH to change rapidly. It is much better to have fish in a stable pH, even if it's not the ideal one, than to have an unstable pH.

 

[The Taffy Apple]

Good morning, you say your tank is 'up and running'... have you 'cycled' the filter at all? If not then you are now in a 'fish-in' cycle, with your PH probably being the least of your worrys.

Is it possible to post a COMPLETE set of water results, IE; Ammonia, NitrIte and NitrAte?

If you have cycled your tank, then it seems you live in an area of soft water (as do i) and your water will constantly be prone to 'PH crashes'.. i combat this by adding slowly dissolving coral, which will keep your PH at a stable 7.2-7.4.

Hope this helps.

Terry.

 

[CezzaXV]

My tap water has a pH of 6.4. It's not unusual.

 

[StandbySetting]

Test it 24 hours after drawing it from the tap, water companies regularly inject CO2 into your water supply to acidify it to prolong the life of the water pipes.

 

[Gvilleguy]

What Terry said - if your water is soft (mine is pH 6.0 and zero KH) the pH will be prone to fluctuations. I fixed this with a small bag of crushed coral that hangs in the outflow from my HOB filter. This stabilizes the pH around 7.0 and does not fluctuate.

 

[Gvilleguy]

What Terry said - if your water is soft (mine is pH 6.0 and zero KH) the pH will be prone to fluctuations. I fixed this with a small bag of crushed coral that hangs in the outflow from my HOB filter. This stabilizes the pH around 7.0 and does not fluctuate.