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I will be setting up a 145 gallon tank with a 30gal. sump filter.
My tap water ph is around 8< and fairly hard.
What is the least costly and or easiest way to reduce the ph to <7?
I would be making 30 gal. weekly changes.
I live in an apartment so rain water is not an option.

Well basically this is a good luck post.
[Talk style= Pointless rambling]
Cause all that I know about PH is that it is the acidity level of something, and a high PH means you hafta put something acidic in to lower it, what fishstores use though I have no idea... an idea might be distilled water... but yeah not exactly the cheapest thing in the world, so I won't give advice {The smart ones should be on soon}. [/Pointless rambling]
But yeah back to the point... good luck.

If you have hard water, there is only one way to get a low pH, and that's buying an RO or deioniser unit to soften your water.

You can buy RO water from your LFS, but 30g a week seems like too much.

All other options like peat, bogwood, leaves, acids buffers etc will not work. I have tried them all. They will only lower pH if you have soft water.

I'm afraid getting hold of some soft water is your only option. There are no cheap shortcuts.

Is there a diferance between deionized and RO water?

I was directed away from using RO water ratios to balance my PH by a LFS guy who has been pretty cool about giving me advice.
He recommended just letting the fish I keep, just get used to the tap water conditions.

Now if I did go with the RO or deionized (processed) water, what is best....
To go only "processed" water and then use natural PH increasers, rocks, substrate or chemicals.
Or to try and ratio "processed" water with my tap water.

Which would be more or less volatile for the tank chemistry?

I heard the RO takes away phosphates to help retard algae growth, but it also removes other compounds that help plant growth.

Is "just right water" really going to make a diference for the fish, or will the fish adjust to the tap water?

Maybe the real question is, how much variation (range)from "perfect" is still fine for breeding etc.

Is there a diferance between deionized and RO water?

No, not with the actual water. RO, DI and distilled are all (for fishkeeping purposes) essentially the same. It's all "pure" water, it's just the equipment to produce it that is different. Each method has it's pros and cons.

He recommended just letting the fish I keep, just get used to the tap water conditions.

Absolutely. This is by far the easiest method! Most fish will be fine in your water. Some won't though, and this is where you have to do your homework before you buy.

However for breeding some fish, soft water is essential.

Now if I did go with the RO or deionized (processed) water, what is best....
To go only "processed" water and then use natural PH increasers, rocks, substrate or chemicals.
Or to try and ratio "processed" water with my tap water.

If you use natural buffers in the tank, you will have very little control over the KH or pH, defeating the point of buying the equipment.

I would just mix back in enough tapwater to bring you to the required hardness. From here you can add peat/acids to gradually lower your pH.

I heard the RO takes away phosphates to help retard algae growth, but it also removes other compounds that help plant growth.

Yes, this is correct, but you can buy bottles of all the right trace elements for your plants.

Is "just right water" really going to make a diference for the fish, or will the fish adjust to the tap water?

Maybe the real question is, how much variation (range)from "perfect" is still fine for breeding etc.

Both of these will depend on what fish we are talking about.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/core/glossary.php

Hope this helps. Deionization, distillation and reverse osmosis have been added recently. There's a difference amongst the 3. Distilled water is the purest: just dissolved gasses. Next, is deionized water, followed by reverse osmosis.
Amanda

Thanks for the great info.

Is there a site that lists the pros and cons of all three purification processes?

I think there is a third option to your delema. You could try co2 injecting. This will work well with hard water... but I don't know how low you could get it to go. Also, everytime you do a water change your ph would swing. The co2 injection would be great for the plants. You didn't post what your actual hardness and Kh values were, and that would help!

Check this linkfor a cool kh/ph relationship chart and info regarding co2 levels. In my heavily planted tanks I keep the co2 levels around 35 ppm and have had no problems.

Why do you need to change your PH to 7?....DC

iis2see wrote:I will be setting up a 145 gallon tank with a 30gal. sump filter.
My tap water ph is around 8< and fairly hard.
What is the least costly and or easiest way to reduce the ph to <7?
I would be making 30 gal. weekly changes.
I live in an apartment so rain water is not an option.

My tap water comes out at 8.2 and sometimes higher. I've been mixing distilled water with tap water to arrive at a ph of 7.2. Using all that distilled water is getting expensive. I checked into an RO unit, but, it seems to me that between the cost of the unit and the periodic replacement of the filters and membranes, that's not inexpensive either. Yesterday I purchased a neutral regulator made by Seachem that I'm experimenting with. It does add phoshate buffers that can induce algae to grow. Since I keep ottocinclus, chaestosoma, farlowella, mollies, and platys, algae is not a bad thing. I know they also make an acid regulator that doesn't contain phosphates. Does anyone have any experience with these types of products?

Ok, so let's first make a couple of things clear:

pH is not THAT critical to most fish - as long as:
1. The fish is slowly transitioned from it's natural environment to the higher/lower pH.
2. The pH isn't TOO far from pH 7.0 - around 1.0-1.5 in either direction is OK, and higher is probably less bad than lower.
3. You're not actively trying to breed the fish.

If you're trying to replicate the natural habitat of the fish, it's most likely MORE important to get the conductivity right, rather than the pH, and getting a LOW conductivity makes it relatively easy to adjust the pH. Note that low conductivity is similar (but not exactly the same) as low hardness.

Most hard water is also alkaline - reducing the hardness will push the water towards 7.0.

If you use buffers to adjust the pH, then you're INCREASING the conductivity, which is the opposite of what the fish wants... Ok, so it may well be that you REPLACED some bad stuff with something slightly less bad, but you're still ADDING conductivity!

The ONLY way to get rid of stuff in your water is to use some sort of purification method: RO, Deionization or distilling. All these methods are expensive, just in slightly different ways
- RO uses a lot of water - you're having pretty good water if you get 15% RO water and 85% waste - and need new filters now and again (and probably more often than the manufacturer says).
- Deionization needs either expensive/dangerous chemicals or replacement filters, more often than RO.
- Distilling doesn't use much waste-water (you can have an air-cooled still - but water cooling is more compact), but you need something to boil the water. This is almost certainly the most expensive solution for home-use.

If it was as simple as just lowering the pH, we could just add muriatic (hydrochloric) acid to the water - but that just changes the pH - not the conductivity.

--
Mats

Well I would have said the same thing Mat said.

I wouldn't worry about it.

The neons we get breed in a pH of 4.... we get them without acclimation dump them into our 7.4 water. Harder is better then softer, alkaline is better then acidic, and warmer is better the colder. Here's an interesting table on the effect pH and temp has on ammonia toxicity.



When is ammonia un-ionized? It's a direct correlation between the temperature and pH. If you would like to read more into it then you can google ammonia toxicity, and read up on website's. http://www.thekrib.com/Chemistry/ammonia-toxicity.html



Table 1. Un-ionized NH3 as a percent of total ammonia (by temperature and pH).
Percent NH3 of total ammonia
Temp (F) pH 6.5 pH 7.0 pH 7.5 pH 8.0 pH 8.5
68 .13 .40 1.24 8.82 11.2
77 .18 .57 1.77 5.38 15.3
82 .22 .70 2.17 6.56 18.2
86 .26 .80 2.48 7.46 20.3