First of all, welcome to TFF! Second, test strips are known to be wildly inaccurate, you are best off getting a liquid test kit. There is no ideal pH for most commonly found fish, they can adapt to a wide range of pH values. Unless you have wild caught fish, or plan on breeding something a little tricky to breed, if you can drink your tap water the pH is probably fine.
As far as water tests go there are 3 basic things to worry about; ammonia nitrite, and nitrate.
Fish produce ammonia as a waste product, the first set of bacteria in your filter convert ammonia, which causes damage to fish, into nitrite, which causes less damage, but is still not good.
The second set of bacteria convert nitrite into nitrate, a substance that fish can deal with as long as the level is below about 30ppm for delicate species, up to 100ppm for more hardy species. Nitrate is removed by water changes, basically dilution.
In a cycled tank you want zero ammonia, zero nitrites, and as low a nitrate value as possible. Notice the numbers, pH is also a number, 7.0 being neuteral, below that is acidic, above that is alkaline.
There is also gH & kH, which are water hardness values, something you really don't have to be concerned with unless you are getting into a breeding project. There is also total dissolved solids, or TDS, which is a measurement of dissolved minerals, which is generally hardness, as well as dissolved organic substances, such as fish waste, left over food, anything other than water that enters the tank.
