Should I Try To Adjust Ph?

[luckyd]

Thanks. We definitely do have hard water, and it probably has a high mineral content too. I guess I can check that with our water supplier.

 

[Christoff]

It's best not to alter your pH (really, we are talking about hardness.) There are some situations that will warrant changing your hardness to suit a particular type of fish, but if you got your fish locally chances are they are already acclimated to your hardness (and pH.) Altering your hardness (pH) will force them to adapt to a foreign hardness (pH) and will stress them out.

It's best to leave well enough alone

pH and hardness are different

I'm with drobbyb on this one, although they are indeed technically different pH is very closely related to hardness. Hard water generally has a high pH and soft water has a lower one.

 

[chrisbassist]

Yes, often. But not always. Hardness refers to the amount of disolved minerals. Most of the time these minerals will raise ph. But not always.

Plus I wouldn't offer someone advice on what to do about their hardness without having them test it. You just don't know what it is. After all, I have fairly hard water, with a ph that sits just below 7. Why? Because I run co2. This lowers my ph, but not my hardness. They are separate. And should be treated as such.

 

[Christoff]

Yes, often. But not always. Hardness refers to the amount of disolved minerals. Most of the time these minerals will raise ph. But not always.

Plus I wouldn't offer someone advice on what to do about their hardness without having them test it. You just don't know what it is. After all, I have fairly hard water, with a ph that sits just below 7. Why? Because I run co2. This lowers my ph, but not my hardness. They are separate. And should be treated as such.

Completely agree they are different and of course people should test their own hardness (GH and KH) first. But in fishkeeping the thing that really matters is the dissolved mineral content (KH and GH) that affects pH. pH fluctuations from dissolved gas content (ie CO2) are a very different kettle of fish (no pun intended ) from those resulting from fluctuation in dissolved solids- it's been demonstrated repeatedly that CO2-driven pH changes have little to no impact on fish. So in effect when people talk about pH they are really talking about hardness. If that makes sense.