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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.

Simple answer, stop using the chemicals. I know it might sound odd, but ph up and down really do not help your tank @all.

If you want to lower your ph the better way to do it is to either buy some driftwood, the tanninic acid will lower the ph gradually. Or purchace peat inserts for your filter.

The constant shifts in the ph that are occuring in your tank due to adding the chems is going to cause alot of stress on your fish.

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Thanks Babel. Quick follow up - what do you think of the bioload? Any suggestions on whether I can add more fish?

Quick follow up, would be your stock needs work . The tigers should be in larger schools, depends what type of pleco, many will outgrow that sized tank, not sure on some of the others but I'm more than sure that others will chime in .

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how low in PH are you trying to go? its usually better to just leave it alone. as logn as its stable and you take the time to acclimate new fish to it, shouldnt be a problem. unless of course you wanna keep fish that are wild caught from really low PH levels.

the pleco is definitely gonna outgrow it. didn't know that at the time.
Also, a preemtive apology. The two "non-descript catfish" I think are corydoris. Considering I just saw someome's name is Corie lover, my sincerest apologies (for my insensitiviy not your loving nondescript fish)

I didn't have any particular Ph level in mind, just thought mine was too low and I'm a little OCD. Primarily, my concern is with adding new fish and making sure they do okay in the water - I recently lost an oscar and I suspect it is because of the changes.
Any idea on how many more fish I could safely add considering what I have already? Any good suggestions? I'm kinda new to freshwater but it's starting to suck me in. I'm also thinking of putting in at least a half-dozen more live plants - could that be bad?

If they're cories you should get three or so more, as well as adding more tiger barbs. Those fish do well and look great in groups. I don't know about keeping a bichir in what appears to be a community type tank. They are large, predatory fish, and you may find cories, tiger barbs, etc missing before long.

Last edited by superlion at 14-Dec-2004 17:48

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as far as stocking i think ill leave that to the experts that crunch numbers better then i do. as far as the plants go i think its safe to say that plants are only bad when they come infested with snails heheh. the only thing i can think of bad from plats is lights out. they rob O2 which the fish need. ive heard a good way to equal this out is run a air stone at night to compensate. running it on a timer would work. reason you only want the stone on at night is during the day it would rob the plants of Co2 due to all the airation. anyway hope that helps.