Ph Gone Crazy!

[JackoUK]

As some of you may have read in my previous posts I have recently moved my 200L community aquarium. I didn't just move it from room to room, I moved it to a different house, about 1/2 a mile away. It has been setup for a week now and I have just done it's weekly 30% water change. Everything went well, fish seem happy as larry now they've got nice clean water. So I kept a bit of water to do my water tests. When I checked my PH is was somewhere between 5.0 asnd 5.5, probably closer to 5.0 if I was honest. I did all my other checks and my Ammonia is 0, Nitrite is 0 and Nitrate is 5. So I tested the tap water and sure enough it gave the same reading as the tank water.

All my fish seem fine, I lost a male guppy this week but put it down to a tumour that I thought I found when I cut him open. Now i'm wondering if this is the start of a massive problem for me and even more deaths. The strange thing is my Panda Corydoras seem fine and from what i've read Pandas aren't too keen on PH swings or very low PH.

1) What I wanted to ask was how do I safely and slowly get my PH up to a more respectable 6.5 - 7.0?
2) How do I keep it there during water changes?
3) Is it possible my test kit is playing up?

Thankyou in advance

 

[bobbyami]

Hi we too had problems with our PH but the other way too high! so we just reduced it buy water change and that PH DOWN stuff. which has worked! u can buy PH UP too i'd say to buy that!

 

[JackoUK]

Hi we too had problems with our PH but the other way too high! so we just reduced it buy water change and that PH DOWN stuff. which has worked! u can buy PH UP too i'd say to buy that!

Yeah i've seen that stuff in my LFS. I would ideally like to bring it down naturally if I could. I'm not keen on the idea of an RO unit for water changes as i'm a bit strapped for cash, uni fees and such, so if theres any other way that'd do the job.

 

[JackoUK]

I see we don't have too many PH experts on at the moment

I was wondering if anyone had used crushed coral in their substrate to increase their PH and buffer the water? I've read a few articles on it and the only problem i've seen is the amount i'd need to use.

Also, my belief was that changing the PH was more stress to fish than even living in a PH outside of their preference. Would that even go for a very acidic PH like mine?