Lowering PH

The water from my tap has a ph of about 7.8 after 24 hours agitation. At the moment to get it down to 7.0 I use API proper ph 7.0. It works great and I don't get any ph rebounds but I can't plant the tank using it. That's what I want to do next, get some real foliage in there and an external filter but until I can get away from using the API water treatment I'm stuck. In the last place I lived I had very hard water and bog wood made no difference. We've just moved tho and the water here doesn't seem to have as high a Kh, I can use the API stuff without having to soften the water first. I've no hardness test kit tho so I'm not really sure.

So whats the best way to reduce the ph of my water so I can plant the aquarium? Is it ok to do this in the tank or will the fish get stressed from the jumps in ph? If I add a nutrient soil is that likely to wreck havoc with my water quality until the filter settles it down?

Any advice would be great.

I good way to lower PH is to put some some peatmoss in the Filter, or Almond leaves.

Don't understand that you can't plant it up!!! There are plenty of plants that you can use in your set up. i.e Hygrophylia - Stricta, these are two fast growing plants and can be divided easily by just snapping off a few pieces and replanting them. don't mess around with the Ph as you will solve one problem and cause two more. your perams are fine.

if your going planted tank a co2 system will lower your ph, also peat in the filter or under your substrate will lower it too and add nutrition for the plants, just make sure it has no additives or is a brand from eheim etc most garden centre peats have additives which can harm fish, almond/banana leaves will also lower ph but also have the effect of being good for fish health... but before you start messing about with your tank what fish are you keeping /hoping to keep as this is more important than the plants which have a wide range of ph tolerance, remember most fish these days are tank bred and used to a ph of 7-ish

russell wrote:

Don't understand that you can't plant it up!!! There are plenty of plants that you can use in your set up.

The API Proper PH 7.0 treatment has a warning on the bottle that says not to use in a planted aquarium. It decholinates, removes heavy metals and probably does a bit more to the water too that makes it unsuitable for a planted aquarium.

The Peat Moss idea sounds promising. I'd like to do something like that under the substrate so I have a bedding for any plants. But what about the water changes? The tank Ph needs to be about 7.0 for the Neon Tetras, Guppies (+ fry) and Adolfoi corys who are already resident. If I'm adding water that has a Ph of 7.8 to a tank that 7.0 then I'm going to get a spike until the peat moss does its thing. How quickly will the ph drop (60L tank) and will this not stress the fish?

I'm gonna be very cautious about this and hopefully have a quarantine tank for when I do any changes on the main tank. I'm just a bit concerned about water changes with a higher ph really.

Hi,
As Sheag 35 mentioned,CO2 for a planted tank is the way to go.adding carbon dioxide to the water is very good for plants and also creates acid therefore lowers the pH.
Peat is also quite good but it depends on your water hardness.
personally i think CO2 by itself should be enough,wanting to have a few fish,you don't want to reach extreme pH values(which could happen with both C02 and peat).
the other thing is if you do a weekly partial water change(25%?),it shouldn't affect the pH of your tank too much.
hope this helps,
all d best!
D

scubadim wrote:

Hi,
As Sheag 35 mentioned,CO2 for a planted tank is the way to go.adding carbon dioxide to the water is very good for plants and also creates acid therefore lowers the pH.
Peat is also quite good but it depends on your water hardness.
personally i think CO2 by itself should be enough,wanting to have a few fish,you don't want to reach extreme pH values(which could happen with both C02 and peat).
the other thing is if you do a weekly partial water change(25%?),it shouldn't affect the pH of your tank too much.
hope this helps,
all d best!
D

Just sharing some of the things I did in the past to lower ph apart from having the driftwood I also add blackwater extract evry water change, added some peat capsules in my cannistr filter and added crushed almond leaves or in Singapore they call it ketapang leaves.

to lower ph you should ideally start with ro water filtered through peat and with bogwood in the tank.if you have access to rainwater this would reduce ph when added to tapwater over time. the softer the water the easier it is to change ph up or down.the ph7 additive is ok but is a short term solution.
phil.

What ever you do do not add Peat under the substrate.Firstly the Ph will gradualy deminish and the peat will then go anerobic!!!! secondly it would be difficult if using peat from garden centers that is clear of addatives to prevent the Fines from the peat seeping into the water column completely covering plants ect, and the tamk would be a mess. unless you are seriously into breeding then a Ph of 7 is fine. once you mess around with the Ph unless you are realy competent you will cause more problems than you solve.
The best results are from ADA amazon., which a lot of serious breeders are changing to . try reading up on ADA, you will find some threads on the forum.

Is having an anerobic layer in the substrate not a good thing? As I understood it this oxygen starved area would provide an ideal place for nitrifying bacteria who would convert the ammonia and nitrite, releasing oxygen and providing nitrates for the plants. Have I got that wrong? Its just from the top of my head.
I've been looking up the ADA soil and their power sand and it looks good alright. I'll be reading more about it though before I spend a premium. If its not much better than more normal soils then whats the point?

Getting an RO unit for a 60L tank seems a bit excessive to me. Before I moved the water was too hard for the ph to be changed by the additive so I filtered the water in a britta filter which softened it completely. I then added the additive and over 24 hours aerated and heated the water before doing the change. It was a chunk of work but I was only doing 20% so that was fine.
The water isn't as hard where I am now so I can do the same procedure without the filtering which makes things much easier.

So now I want to cut the additive out which means I'm working with a ph of 7.8. The blackwater extract seems to be the answer I'm looking for to prepare the water for the change but is there any other methods I could use before the water goes in the tank?

Scubadim, you've reassured me a bit about adding the higher PH water to the tank though I'd like to avoid spending on a CO2 system unless I have to. Would the other additions, almod leaves and peat capsules in the filter be as effective at reducing the PH?

co2 is probably the least messy way to go, but it can be done cheaper than some of the pro kits, scubadim would have more on that, almond leaves and peat capsules are super for dropping ph, but monitor the levels as you dont want a ph crash..as for the anerobic level no not great for your tank this is one of the reasons gravel cleaning is done as this anerobic layer if broken can release gases into the water that will kill your fish, but with routine cleaning you can and will avoid this i had peat substrate when i kept discus and never had a problem with it