New Fish And Water Ph

[Chris Wright]

I have a question:
Buying my first fish today, I had my water PH checked by my LFS. They said it was 7.8 but that was typical for the area and their fish were mostly already kept in it so it shouldn't be a problem. I have used filtered water for my tank which is reasonably hard and with 5ppm nitrate direct from the tap making around 7-10ppm nitrate in the tank after a 75% water change. (No ammonia or nitrite present after fishless cycling). My new fish are 4 Galaxy Rasboras and 2 pygmy corydoras. Will these be OK in the PH of 7.8? Or should I use a PH lowering additive?
Chris

 

[Bluetooth]

With those fish i wouldnt worry hugely about your PH, most fish can survive quite a wide range ph wise, i have even heard of discus being kept in neutral/slightly alkaline PH's

Never mess with your water unless there is something wrong, messing with your water with additives, chemicals and the like is a quick way to serious issues and lots of dead fish.

However if you DO want to acidify your water, PH buffers will only last so long, and then your PH will neutralize back to where it was before. Your best bet for a long term acidifier is bogwood or mopani wood, i use 2 peices of bogwood in my discus tank and that gives me a constant ph of 6.2

 

[OldMan47]

A simple principle to follow is that the fish can adjust to any reasonable pH but they do not do as well when it is all over the map. If you start trying to move the pH without first taking into account the mineral content of the water, chances are your lowering attempts will be very short lived and the pH will bounce back. If you do that often enough, the pH will eventually stay lower but the fish will have been severely stressed by the efforts and the water mineral content will be much higher than when you started. Another consideration is that the fish with a reputation for low pH usually are fish that like very low mineral content water, they will not do well in low pH high mineral content water. The mineral content is almost always the thing that is important to the fish's well being.

 

[Chris Wright]

Thanks for the reply. I have 2 pieces of bogwood in the tank so maybe it will gradually lower the PH a bit. The charcoal canister type water filter in my house is suppose to remove some metals etc from the water so hopefully this will be good for the fish. I've taken to drawing off a bucketful and leaving it to stand for a couple of days to use for water changes, then adding some heated filtered water to it to get it to the tank temperature. Is this a reasonable thing to do?
Chris

 

[OldMan47]

It should work but be sure to dechlorinate anyway. Leaving the water to stand will not remove any chloramines if that is what your water supplier is using for preventing bacteria build ups in the water system.