Rising Ph?

[memder]

Hi,

my tap water is very hard (>140) and has a PH of 7.0-7.2. Unfortunately, I have two grourmis, one silver dollers and two bettas, all of which prefer soft and acid water.

I bought a water softener pillow and also a nitra-zorb pillow from Aquarium Pharmaceuticals, INC. I used nitra-zorb for one day, the PH in the tank rose to 7.6 and I managed to lower it back to 7.2. I used the water softener for another day, the PH again, after one night, rose to 7.6.

This happened to my tank also after I used Jungle Ammonia Clear tablet.

If you happened to use any of the water softener pillow, nitra-zorb pillow, and Ammonia Clear tablet, did you have any chang PH level?

If they do not affect PH, what is the other possible reason then? If they do, what else I can do to lower my PH and soften the water?

Thanks a ton!

 

[waterdrop]

First of all, changing pH and/or KH from your tap water baseline is generally not recommended in the sense that it is a constant and continuous fight thereafter and most people lose I think. But keep an eye out for further advice from experts better than me!

That said, I will say that lowering and softening is harder than raising and hardening! It is important to understand the prinicples as much as possible. Here is a page I found pretty clear:

http/www.drhelm.com/aquarium/chemistry.html

Here is another one with some of the same stuff but a few differences:

http/www.aquatropics.com/filtration.htm

I'm sure you've seen the many admonitions on TFF to steer clear of as many chemical additions or adjusters as possible in your aquarium, so I'll refrain...

Good luck with your problems, my thoughts are just one little bit for you to consider, hopefully among many comments yet to come!

~~waterdrop~~
ps. adding "peat" layers in your filter is one of the few accepted methods you will hear about, so you might want to being your TFF searches with that word.

 

[OldMan47]

Those are some good references that water drop gave you. A hardness of 140 ppm is not very hard. Fish will adapt easily to 140 ppm of TDS. Please do not use chemicals to adjust your hardness or pH. The problem is not what you are trying to accomplish with your noble quest for the ideal pH and hardness, the problem is what it does to the fish. As you have already seen, the water can be changed and does change by your actions but the next day you are back where you started. From the fish's point of view it is high pH one day, a rapid change to low pH then high pH the next day. A better picture for the fish would be a pH a little higher than they would like but after a bit they get used to it and don't need to change again. The ups and downs can be very stressful on the fish.