Qs About Ph And Hardness

[LolaLouie]

I have a 200 litre (50 gallon) tank with the fish listen in my sig. I would like to add some more dwarf cichlids and possibly over time make this tank a dwarf cichlid community tank. The problem is that al the fish I like (and most the fish I own) prefer slightly acidic, soft water. Living in London I have a pH of 8 and I haven't tested but no doubt I have hard water....

...so here's the questions...

1) Is it difficult to change pH and water softness?
2) Is there common problems that occur with altering tap water pH etc. and if so what are they?
3) Is there a way i can change the pH of a tank slowly while the fish are still in it?
4) Can you make hard water soft without having to get water from another source? (as I live on a 3rd floor flat with no elevator!)

Really appreciate any advice on this!

Thanks!

 

[Colin_T]

Ph can be altered with sodium biphosphate available from any petshop as PH down. You can soak a bag of peat moss in the tank and it helps to drop the PH over time. Driftwood can sometimes do it too.
Water hardness is more difficult to reduce. Most people use R/O (reverse osmosis) units. However these waste a lot of water. The best units on the market waste 1 litre for each litre of clean water they give you. R/O units force the water through membranes that physically remove the dissolved minerals in the water.
Rain water can be used and so can distilled water but distilled costs a lot to buy and make unless you live in Africa or Australia where there is lots of sunlight. Rainwater is fine from most areas and has no minerals in it. SO you put a bucket out under the gutters and collect yourself some. Mix it with the tap water in a 50/50 ratio and it will soften the water and drop the PH.
Most people just live with the water they have and as long as the fish aren't wild caught they should be fine in slightly hard alkaline water.

 

[rocknurworld2006]

bogwood is the best thing to lower ph, dont use liquids called ph down or anyother that lower ph. as they can cause lots of fluctuations between ph which will cause alot of problems on your fish.

 

[backtotropical]

bogwood is the best thing to lower ph, dont use liquids called ph down or anyother that lower ph. as they can cause lots of fluctuations between ph which will cause alot of problems on your fish.

Agreed. Avoid off the shelf chemicals which claim to lower pH. They are more trouble than they are worth.

Bogwood might be a good idea, but it doesn't lower the pH much (especially if you have hard water) and may stain your water brown.

I would advise that unless you are planning to keep Discus or some other extremely sensitive fish, that your pH probably won't cause too many problems as it is.

If you do decide to lower the pH however, i would suggest that bogwood or peat are probably the most reliable methods, without spending money on an RO unit.

 

[LolaLouie]

I have a lot of bog wood in the tank and it doesn't seems to have lowered the pH at all! I guess I will just have to live with what I've got. So when you see cichlids (such as rams etc.) where it says to keep them in pH 6.5 soft water you think they will be ok in my water??

Thanks for the advice!

 

[rdd1952]

Changing the pH is something that you should only do for fish that require specific water such as discus like BTT mentioned. How easy it is to do depends on the buffering capacity of your water. If it is high, then it's very hard to move the pH without using RO water. Even the off the shelf products (which I definitely don't condone using) won't have much effect as the water is too heavily buffered.

 

[CFC]

Bogwood and chemicals wont lower the pH of London tapwater, i have pieces of wood cut from decent sized trees in my tanks and the pH sits at a rock steady 7.8. The cause of this is the KH, i haven't tested it for a few years but when i last did it was registering at about 15dKH, with that ammount of carbonate hardness to buffer the pH any change you manage to make will just be temporary.

Rainwater in large urban areas just isnt safe to use as it soaks up pollution from the air and from surfaces it falls on, you could take the risk and run it through carbon before use but its not something i'd put in any of my tanks.

The answer to keeping softwater species in London is R/O water, you can buy it from most decent fish stores for around 15p a litre or buy your own R/O unit and make your own, though you will need water source to plumb it to, a container that is large enough to store the created water and somewhere for the waste water to drain to.
R/O water is a blank canvas that allows you to shape the water to your needs, you will need to add some minerals back to the water before it can be safely used by adding reclaim chemistry products like Kent R/O right and Kent pH stable to the raw R/O water before adding it to the tank. You can then customise your water further by adding peat to the filtration and dried leaves such as oak or beach leaves or even Indian Almond leaves which all release humic acids that softwater fish love.

 

[LolaLouie]

Wow that all sounds complicated and expensive!