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Okies. I don't usually post so I'm a little nervous. Please don't yell at me if I ask something stupid. My Ph is stubbornly not moving below 7.8. My tap water comes out at around 7.4 and always moves up to 7.8ish. I have tried adding chems to lower the Ph but the change is always reversed within a day or two. I tried to spread out the dosing (to once every day or two for about a week) then halved the dose to avoid the Ph falling off the shelf. However, after about 4 full dosings and 3 half dosings, my water - I'll call it PHinator water - holds steady at 7.8
I have a 46g bowfront. 1 power head. temp steady at 78.
2 dwarf gouramis
1 bichir
3 tiger barb
1 sailfin molly
1 red-tailed shark
1 crab (red claw)
1 pleco
2 nondescript catfish
2 live plants

all deco in tank inert (incl. synthetic sand).

Thanks so much for any help.

I like to gauge pH by the health of fish...

If your trops are eating and seem to be perfectly happy then your pH is fine.

The absolute max pH is 9.0ppm if you were wondering and my pH always hangs around the 7.8 pH value.

You may never achieve the so-called neutral pH of 7.0 and to tell you the truth your fish, if new to the tank and properly acclimated before adding to the tank, will do fine in your present pH.

pH shock occurs when the pH is suddenly changed before the fish have a chance to adapt.

Never use chems to adjust pH. Most of the time the chems never work anyway and the buffered water bounces back to its norm, as it should.

Welcome to Fish Profiles. I hope your stay will be a pleasure and educational.

--garyroland.


Last edited by garyroland at 14-Dec-2004 19:31

Why are you lowering it anyway? None of those fish require particularly low pH.

Edit: grammar

Last edited by trystianity at 15-Dec-2004 06:18

hey Az, contrary to what every pet store will try to tell you, a pH of 7 is not absolutely positively necessary

Mine was at 7.8 for over a year and i had all manner of things that should have curled up and died according to most store helpers, but they were happy as larry.

a stable pH is almost always better than one that flies around all over the place trying to get to the 'ideal'

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Thank you guys sooo much. I'm gonna let it stay as it is, and slowly replace evaporation water with distilled water. Hopefully this makes a gradual enough change not to shock the fish and I end up - as I hear - in quite some time - with a lower Ph.

Actually replaceing evaporated water with distilled water will maintain your minerals very constant, this is great for the fish, but if you are attempting to change something then you should remove 5% of the water (on top of evaporation) and top it up with distilled. but I wouldn't recommend doing that more then 10 times (35% or so distilled) since distilled has no nutrients or elements at all.

Hope I can explain this well.

Evaporated water, let say a kettle, if you have hard water you get calcium (and other elements) in the bottom, like stones, well as the water evaporates it concentrates these minerals, by not removing water, the mineral content remains the same (you just re-dilute it) but removing 5% and re adding it in distilled you have effectively removed 5% of the elements in the water. (hmmm. made more sense when I was thinking it.)