water Ph and ammonium levels

[JHAWKER]

My water straight out of tap and untreated, the Ph is 8.5 and Ammonium is 3 mg/l. I plan on treating with biosafe and using marineland black/white diamond blend initially, so not real concerned with ammonium I guess. I want to keep 2 baby oscars in my 75g, will they be OK in this basic water? Any recommendations on lowering the Ph, like filtering with peat. I don't want to start Ph rollercoaster. Thanks

 

[William]

I am moving this to the tropical chit chat section you'll get more help there welcome to the forum.

 

[semper fi]

first of all you should be concerned about lowering the ammonia in the water before adding it to the tank! the water that you start off with should be ammonia free. it will take atleast a few days for the filter medium to get rid of it so it will be present in the tank. maybe set up a 20 gallon the you can filter the water for a few days til the ammonia is gone prior to doing water changes. you are opening your tank up to all kinds of problems by not removing the ammonia. also make sure that you change the medium atleast every three if not every other week. filter will remove toxins out of the tank for about three weeks and then it becomes ineffective. it will then start to leach toxins back into the tank. if you have a problem with ammonia in your water you will have to make sure that you are not letting the medium go longer than that.

crushed coral as a substrate will help to stabilize your ph. when the ph is high the water is lower in acid. when the ph is low, the water is acidic. to raise the ph you want to add acid to the water. you can raise the ph in pools by adding muriatic acid to the water without it being harmful. supposedly you can add two drops of muriatic acid to every five gallons of water also without harming the fish. do not know if i would try this though. muriatic acid is a diluted sulphuric acid. and sulphuric is a pure acid. after 4 minutes of being exposed to the air the acid is neutralized. neutralization is when the acid is returned to water with a ph of 7.0-7.5.

hth

maggie