Newbie here Please Help

[luckypenny]

Just found this great forum and hope you can help?? I currently just set up a 75 Gallon Tank and had a few fish in it ( redfin rainbow shark) and two bela sharks and 2 loaches.
Well I love the colors of the ciclids so a just purchased a peacock cichlid and a few other's and are doing fine in the tank with the other fish.

Ive heard so many does and don'ts with these fish and dont know what to do. I ve heard cichlids like the ph to be between 7.8 and 8.3??? My ph is 7.2 and the fish are doing just fine>??? The temp of the aquariam is 75 degree's.

So m y question is what is the best ph balance for cichlids and the temp??

Thanks for all replies.

 

[enchanted]

Somebody else can correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand playing with your PH is bad unless you need to.

If your fish are doing fine I wouldn't touch it unless some start having problems.

 

[The-Wolf]

A stable pH is prefered to one that is higher or lower than recomended
ddreams is correct that messing about with pH does more damage than good.

 

[Angry_Platy]

The pH of my tanks is 7.6...slightly high for most fish but slightly low for the cichlids....when I first got the fish I used to change the pH on a regular basis but I eventually learnt it is better to be in a less than optimal pH than constant pH changes all the time. Poor fishies

The LFS where I buy my fish from tell me that I should change the pH with each ne fish I put in to mkatch their water.....NO WAY!!!

Good luck with your fish

 

[yhbae]

As mentioned already, stable pH is much more important than getting the pH just right. Your pH of 7.2 is great for 90% of all the species out there.

Unfortunately, Peacock does come from the alkaline environment - I don't know many that keeps Lake Malawi species at pH of 7.2. I've seen people keeping malawi species at 7.6 long term though.

In fact, my normal tap water is at 7.2 and I had to create a recepe to get to pH = 8.0, KH = 8, GH = 8. My mbuna are doing nicely & breeding. Water parameters are rock solid. I use baking soda and epsom salt. (Of course you shouldn't do this, otherwise you will end up with undesirable water for the rest of your species!)

Personally, I'd say you should choose either species from drift lakes only (with additional buffering), or none of them. Given your native water parameters, I'd go with non-drift lake species (at least this time around ). New world cichlids are good in your water parameters as well...