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I am due to get some guppies on wednesday which is cool. However i thought i'd test the water for its ph and its measuring at 5.0 which is orange, I tested my other tropical tank its the same but noone is ill infact i have baby bristlenose in there. But the guppy tank will this be ok or shall i add some salt to bring the ph down as salt is alkaline ..

They say fishes are dumb, because humans need to be smarter in keeping the fishes alive.

Hi,
With a pH of 5, the water is way too acidic for the guppy.
One way to fix this without the use of water conditioners
would be to use a substrate that made exclusively from
one of the carbonates. Use crushed limestone, dolomite,
or coral. If you opt to use the crushed coral, I would
add crushed oyster shells to it as well. Crushed coral
is practically pure Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3) the other
suggestions have some necessary impurities such as
Magnesium which are necessary for good fish health.

Add the water to the tank with the substrate, and watch
the pH, over time it will swing up toward 8. When you
perform 10-20% water changes the pH will dip and then
come right back up where it belongs.

Here is an interesting site (among many):

http://guppyplace.tripod.com/Getting.html

If you look across the links at the bottom, they are all
for guppy lovers and much of the information contained
in those links applies to all the live-bearers.

Frank


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