Confused About Water Hardness

[waggie]

Hello everyone

I have been thinking about keeping tropical fish for a while, and in particular I'm wanting to keep some guppies as the OH absolutely loves them. I spent a few weeks reading up on the fishless cycle, ordered an 180l tank and everything I needed to get started, which all arrived 2 weeks ago. I have been fishless cycling for about 10 days now and believe I am almost there. So today I started to read up on guppies and their care, and learned that they require hard water with a PH of about 7.5 - 8.0. The problem is that I live in a soft water area with a PH of about 7.2 and poor buffering capacity. I tested my tap water today and it indeed read at 7.2 PH, however the water in the cycling tank reads 6.5, so there has been a big drop in PH! I have searched the net for info on raising hardness and PH but not many aqaurists recommend it or are willing to give advice on it as they it is dangerous to mess with it. However I have also read about ppl doing it, although they don't say how it's done. And as I don't understand how all this GH, KH buffering and PH works, could really do with it explaining in laymans terms. Also is there any easy and safe way to raise the buffering capability and PH.

My OH has really got her heart set on these guppies, and what the MRS wants the MRS gets. If you get me!!!

cheers
Waggie

 

[reflexhunter]

I don't think you will have a problem with your fish because your tap water dosen't fit into the"ideal"ph parameters it's pretty close to it anyway but if you realy want to raise it they make a bunch of products to do so just google it.you could also use limestone rocks or crushed coral for your substrate both will help to raise your ph some and to help to keep it stable,but if you are doing weekly w/c it should,nt be neccesary imo.gl

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Waggie.

Soft water with a moderate pH is not ideal for most of the common livebearers. It is often a good idea to raise the KH and GH of the water for that type of fish but you must not ignore the fact that changing the water to match the fish is often the wrong thing to do in the long term. It is usually better to make the fish that you buy match the water that you have. If you are willing to do the needed maintenance, you can keep almost any fish with almost any tap water but it takes much more effort than just getting a good match. You said that you have soft water but do you know how soft it is? The actual value of GH would be helpful when deciding if guppies will be OK in the water.

On another note, your low pH is probably going to slow or stop the cycle fairly soon so a large water change to restore your pH and KH is in order.