High PH -- Tap Water

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M

mrfuzz

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 31, 2008
206
0
0
Florida
Hi folks,


I'm trying to help a friend of mine setup their new tanks.. 55G and 25G. Working on getting their water set. I cannot seem to get their PH to go down for anything. General florida hard water I suppose.


I've tried Seachem neutral regulator 7.0. in many doses in the 25G for testing, and nothing works, no changes. Its roughtly 7.6+

It seems that the only resort would be to either try seachem acid buffer, to work on the hard water some more, Or resort to a 75% bottled water / 25% tap water and use the neutral regulator.. Seems to work that way. hate to see them literally pouring money in the tank via bottled water.


they want a Community tank, which is fine. They dont want to go african cichlid route =(
Any other idea's to get the PH level down? Driftwood is out of question ( yellow haze )
 
White distilled vinegar...

They are aquarium safe and pretty acidic. Most PH DOWN products are made of vinegar and PH UP are made of un-baked baking soda. That's it. I have been using them for years to get PH where I want them to be. For my salt tank, I used baking soda and water solutions aweekly to make up for the 6.0 PH that comes out of my RO.

For my fresh tank, I used white distilled vinegar to bring the PH down to 6.5 from my tap.

For 55G, take your pH reading prior to adding vinegar, add 5ml first, take another reading. If it doesn't show any significant amount, add another 5 ml,n take another test. keep doing this until you see a significant reading. Try to aim for .4-.5 ph changes.

Once you know how many ML does it take to lower PH by .4-.5, then you can use the formula in the future...

For your 25G, just cut your ration down to half.

Just make sure you do this slowly, I never change PH value by more than .5-1 Ph per day.

stan
 
Interesting, Never heard of distilled white vinegar before!

However, You stated 5ML that is not much at all. About 1 tsp?

Both tanks are already filled with water. What I'm trying to do is get the PH stabilized in a bucket for when they do water changes, Basically the most important.


I'm assuming try the vinegar, and then use the neutral regulator to level out the PH?

Any other suggestions?
 
You should leave it alone, upper & lower products will do nothing but make the fish sick and the environment unstable. If he's got fish that are sooo sensitive that they have to have soft water to live (like wild-caught breeding Discus) then he needs to be mixing RO water with tap water to soften it, NOT adding those pH upper and lower products.
 
Add a buffer to any water you add to the tank. Evap and water change. Guys with reef tanks have been doing this for years.
 
Buffer is basically baking soda...I have been keeping reef for years, I never buy any over the counter PH crap..
 
mrfuzz;2019839; said:
However, You stated 5ML that is not much at all. About 1 tsp?



I'm assuming try the vinegar, and then use the neutral regulator to level out the PH?

Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Read my post above again, you start with 5ml and test, add another 5 ml and test until you see a significant changes in your PH. 1 tsp is 5ml :)

use the vinegar until your PH is at 7 (neutral). No need to use any regulator.

stan
 
Here is the problem though...hardness. If the carbonate hardness is too high, which many tap waters are, the PH will not remain neutral. What needs to be done is to soften the water first and then drop the PH.

Keep in mind, tap water conditioners like Prime and such will raise PH as well if you overdose them. When it says a capful for 55 gal, it means it.
 
Stan and Jay thank you both for your follow up on those suggestions you mentioned earlier.

I will look into the vinegar route tonight and hope for a change.. You would think the Ph neutral regulator would lower the PH -- It worked fine for bottled water as a little test.

I have a hunch that the water here in Florida where I live has their own buffers including chlorine to keep the water hard / ph stable.
 
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