Darius
New Member
Hi
I have had my tank a good few months now (Rio 180), I bought it second hand and it was cycled and stocked already.
Everything is fine except for my PH levels...
It is sitting at PH 6 at the most, my test doesn't go any lower than that. I would like it to be about 6.8. My tapwater is PH 7.4.
It had 2 very large pieces of bogwood in it, so I read that they make the water more acidic, I took them out and thought that the PH would go up slowly as I did regular water changes, but it didn't.
The only other thing I could think of was the gravel (It's the normal common gravel you see in a lot of tanks), because it had a heck of a lot of dirt in it, The guy who owned the tank before hardly ever cleaned it out.
I took out the fish and kept about 35% of the tank water, cleaned the gravel and cleaned the tank - put everything back and put in the tank water and treated tap water, I tested the PH it was about 6.4.
So as not to stress the fish which were in a bucket of tank water, I added the new tank water to the bucket to gradually help them adjust to the higher PH.
I put them back in and they are all fine.
Next day Itested the tank PH back PH of 6 MAX! (could be less like I said my test only tests down as far as 6).
What could possibly be making my water more acidic? I really want to move the PH up so it suits my fish better and so I can buy fish that require a higher PH value.
Any ideas, I would rather not use PH chemicals but acheive it naturally.
Thanks
David
I have had my tank a good few months now (Rio 180), I bought it second hand and it was cycled and stocked already.
Everything is fine except for my PH levels...
It is sitting at PH 6 at the most, my test doesn't go any lower than that. I would like it to be about 6.8. My tapwater is PH 7.4.
It had 2 very large pieces of bogwood in it, so I read that they make the water more acidic, I took them out and thought that the PH would go up slowly as I did regular water changes, but it didn't.
The only other thing I could think of was the gravel (It's the normal common gravel you see in a lot of tanks), because it had a heck of a lot of dirt in it, The guy who owned the tank before hardly ever cleaned it out.
I took out the fish and kept about 35% of the tank water, cleaned the gravel and cleaned the tank - put everything back and put in the tank water and treated tap water, I tested the PH it was about 6.4.
So as not to stress the fish which were in a bucket of tank water, I added the new tank water to the bucket to gradually help them adjust to the higher PH.
I put them back in and they are all fine.
Next day Itested the tank PH back PH of 6 MAX! (could be less like I said my test only tests down as far as 6).
What could possibly be making my water more acidic? I really want to move the PH up so it suits my fish better and so I can buy fish that require a higher PH value.
Any ideas, I would rather not use PH chemicals but acheive it naturally.
Thanks
David