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the tap water were i live comes out at 8.2. this is to hard even for most ciclids what is the best way to soften water i know there are several different ways

Well, firstly I'm going to guess that 8.2 was a pH reading, which is a completely different reading than hardness. pH is a concentration of H+ ions, is a measure of how acid the water is. Hardness is a measure of the dissolved minerals in the water, nothing to do with acids. Typically, hard water does have higher pH, but it is not required.

Now, that cleared up, a pH of 8.2 with hard water is very good for some fish. Most of the livebearers will thrive in this, and you are incorrect -- African Rift Lake cichlids will be quite at home in this water. Some of them have native waters that approach a pH of 9.0.

A second point I'd like to bring up is that fish can be extremely adaptable, in that many fish, so long as you aren't trying to continuously change the pH (which is stressful), will adapt and live long happy healthy lives even if the hardness and/or pH is outside of their native waters' range.

This is where research comes into play before purchase. Read up on how hardy and adaptable the species is before you buy. There are very few species that no one on this forum has never kept before, so you can always ask on here first.

Probably my biggest point here is that tinkering with water chemistry is a very tricky and difficult business. If the fish you want will be fine in your water, it is far easier, safer, and cheaper to let them adapt.

Finally, if you still insist on softening and acidifying your water, you could use peat filtration, or look into getting an RO unit. But, I would see if my fish could adopt to my water first. Ask your LFS what water they keep their fish in. If both the LFS and you are on the same water, the fish have probably adapted to the local water, and will be completely fine.

I've kept plenty of south american cichlids in ph 8.6 and some tetras in nearly 9.0. Unless your keeping sensitive wild caught fish or trying to breed you don't need to mess with the ph. Don't try keeping say rummynose tetras or licorice gouramis in it but most anything sold at local stores will survive just fine.

If for some reason your still interested in lowering the ph then first off dilute it using RO or distilled water. Alot of grocery stores and fish stores with saltwater tanks sell RO water at around $.25 per gallon. You can dilute the water down to around 7.4 ph that way or after getting it below 8.0 you can use peat moss to lower it further but if you try to lower the ph from 8.2 with just peat moss you usually have black water before you see any change. Peat will stain the water so you will need chemical filtration like carbon or seachem's purigen to remove the color unless you like slightly brown tanks. Peat can also bring the ph as low as 5.0 so you need to be careful with it.

Water Hardness Conversion Table

Water hardness is a measure of the concentration of specific dissolved minerals. Two types of hardness are recognised in the water utilities industry - temporary hardness (related to the quantity of dissolved Calcium Carbonate) and permanent hardness (related to the quantity of dissolved salts such as Calcium and Magnesium Sulphate). The reason that carbonates (and Bicarbonates, correctly termed 'Hydrogen Carbonates' in chemistry) contribute to 'temporary' hardness is that upon boiling the water, these substances end up precipitating out - the so called 'fur' on the element of an electric kettle for example. 'Permanent' hardness results from compounds that do not precipitate upon heating - Magnesium Sulphate being an excellent example.

From the standpoint of the aquarist, 'total hardness' is a measure of the amount of all contributing minerals present in the water - Carbonates, Sulphates, the lot. 'Carbonate hardness' is specifically the amount of dissolved Carbonate ions, whatever other ions they happen to be paired up with in solution, along with Hydrogen Carbonate ions (which take part in dynamic equilibria between dissolved Carbon Dioxide and Carbonate ions - this is the reason why Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate, or Sodium Bicarbonate to give it its common name, acts as a buffer when in solution).

If at this point, you're starting to think that water chemsitry is a complex topic, you're right. In fact, there is so much still left for us to learn about the chemistry of water and substances dissolved therein, that graduate chemistry students can still earn a Ph.D by concentrating on some facet of water chemistry and studying it for their theses. The good news, however, is that you don't need a Ph.D in chemistry to understand enough about the basics of water chemistry to apply that knowledge to fishkeeping - which is just as well, or hardly any of us would be able to keep fishes!

The reason why water containing high concentrations (and by 'high' I mean something like 100 parts per million or above) of hardness minerals tends to have a higher pH is that when you add Carbonates in particular, you push the equilibrium toward the generation of more Hydrogen Carbonates, which temporarily mops up some of the Hydrogen ions in the water, leaving a slight excess of Hydroxide ions (water itself undergoes weak ionisation, splitting into Hydrogen ions and Hydroxide ions, but only very weakly - about one molecule in 600 million) which equates to a higher pH. Threfore hard water is usually more alkaline than soft water, though there are exceptions to this rule - it's possible for soft water to be alkaline if it contains any excess Hydroxides (even small amounts of which will cause the pH to climb rapidly - a small amount of Sodium Hydroxide dissolved in water will push the pH up to 12.0 with ease) and it's possible to have hard, yet acidic water too (in this case, the hardness is provided by non-carbonate minerals)

Basically, your tap water is, n part at least, a cocktail of ions engaging in partner swapping thousands of times per second. What is measured when a chemist performs a water analysis is the gross equilibrium populations of these ions. Each of the ions present is engaged in partner swapping with other ions - so that, at any one moment frozen in time, a Carbonate ion could be associated with a Magnesium ion, then a Calcium ion, then become a Hydrogen Carbonate ion before switching back to being a Carbonate ion again. If you were able to 'tag' a particular ion and follow its history, this is what you would see, though your would need a VERY fast camera to track it - recently a Nobel Prize was awarded to a team of chemists who devised such a camera system using laser beams with a pulse time of, wait for it, around one femtosecond. So in other words, in order to track your 'tagged' ion (assuming you COULD tag a particular ion of course) you would have to illuminate it with stroboscopic laser lighting at the rate of 1,000,000,000,000,000 flashes per second!

What matters of course to your fishes isn't this high speed cavorting of the ions in question - rather, what matters to them is the ambient concentrations, which is, if you like, a kind of statistical average census of the ion populations in the water. With respect to hardness causing minerals, some fishes (e.g., Amazonian fishes and fishes from rainforest streams of a similar nature on other continents) prefer their water to have low concentrations of these minerals, while others (Rift Lake Cichlids being the prime example) prefer high concentrations because that's what they've evolved to live in.

So, your next task is to measure those dissolved minerals. If your hardness values emerge as being pretty high, then hey presto, you have ideal water for Rift Lake Cichlids. This page]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Malawi[/link] gives typical values for the pH and hardness of Lake Malawi - pH ranging from 7.7 to 8.6, hardness ranging from 107 to 142 milligrams per litre of dissolved minerals (4 to 6 degrees dH according to [link=this page). Lake Tanganyika, on the other hand, has more alkaline water, typically ranging from pH 8.6 to pH 9.5, and hardness values of 11 to 17 degrees dH (again that Cichlid Forum page cites these values). So, with a pH of 8.2, your water is probably best suited to keeping Malawian Cichlids - Mbunas, Malawi Peacocks, and the Malawi Haps. It is also good for numerous Central American Cichlids that also like hard, alkaline water if you don't fancy keeping Rifts, and also good for many Livebearers, particularly Mollies, which appreciate a good mineral content in their water, and will also suit certain Killifish species (usually the North and Central American species). Fishes that are NOT likely to do well in your water include Discus, some West African riverine Cichlids, South American and West African Killies, and the majority of Labyrinth Fishes. Having said that, quite a few of the aquarium staples in the trade have adapted to varying watetre conditions over time, and so you may find fishes that are nominally 'wrong' for your water that actually do quite well - a good number of Characins from South America are particularly adaptable in this regard. However, several of those, while they will live reasonably well in your water, won't breed in it - Rummy Nosed Tetras will NOT breed at all in hard water, for example.

And now, after having written another 25,000 word dissertation for everyone to read, I'll leave yu to digest this little lot.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Buy fish from a store local to yourself. They will already be acclimatised to the hard water. Fish are adaptable creatures, so long as the water is stable, they can adapt and be OK. It is often better to keep them in sub-optimal but stable conditions than to tinker with the PH and hardness and cause spiking and instability.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions