Ph

[Greg Curtis]

Whats the easiest way to lower the ph and hardness of my tank water.

[andywoolloo]

I do not know about hardness but driftwood lowers ph slightly and looks awesome in the tank.

[sidguppy]

peat

peatgranules in the filter or buried below the sand.

[Greg Curtis]

Thanks guys, will the peat lower the hardness as well as the ph.

[MatsP]

Any acidic substance will lower the pH, and peat does contain a weak acid. However, you need LOTS of peat to make any dent in water that is quite hard. If your water is relatively soft, then peat will definitely lower the pH.

The only REAL way to change the hardness [1] is some sort of de-ionization process: Reverse Osmosis filtration, distillation, De-Ionization (usually combined with RO).

[1] A regular "water softener" that is charged with salt or potassium chloride will not do - it is a ion-exchange system, and although it does change the hardness of the water, it doesn't change the conductivity in the water (at least not in the right direction). Conductivity is to some extent more important than the actual constituents of the minerals of the water.

--
Mats

[sidguppy]

if your water is really hard (12-15DH or more), the pH is up (8 or more) and even worse the KH is above 5 or 6 or so it's gonna be tough

a much better scenario is then to adapt your hobby to the watersupply.
wich means: stick to hardwater catfishes.......

because dapting the water seems OK and fine, loads of advice, loads of tricks and then you run into the weekly waterchange to get the nitrates, the fishpoop and the fishwee out of your tank

and the fresh clean water won't please your acidic softwater blackwater fish at all if it's "liquid lime"......
it's a bugger

everytime you have trouble -diseases, a clotting filter, a tank transfer, quarantaining new fish- that includes a lot of water changes, you'll run headlong into this.

adapt the hobby to the available water and yoúll make it a LOT easier, on you AND on the fish.

the only other way to make a blackwaterbiotope reasonably easy when the tapwater is hard is to collect lots and lots of rain.
wich is fine if you live in Maine, or Seattle, or the UK, or Netherlands or some other place where it's pissing 8 days a week

but not if you're located in Colorado or the Australian outback or something......

I dunno how the climate is in Virginia
Greg, how IS the climate in Virginia, US? dry? hot? cold? wet?

[OldMan]

The best way that I have used to lower pH and hardness in my tanks is by mixing in RO water. The RO contains almost no dissolved solids so is way too soft to use alone. By mixing it with tap water you can get almost any softness that you want. You just measure the hardness of the tap and the RO and calculate the mix to achieve your desired results. Once the water is soft, it becomes much easier to move the pH around. That is both a good thing and a bad one. The good part is that you can get the pH you want but the bad part is that the pH you get will be much less stable than when you use water with a higher KH.

[Greg Curtis]

Thanks guys, sounds like a tricky procedure trying to balance the ph and hardness at the same time. I don't want to make the water quality unstable as I think in the long run it will hurt the fish. I guess I'll just try letting them adapt to the water conditions and go from there. My waters ph I believe is around 7.4 but don't know how hard it is. Time will tell.

[L number Banana]

Hi Greg,
You can purchase a test kit that will show what your hardness is naturally. Also, try calling the water supplier, they should already have this info, same with many fish stores in your area, they may know the numbers off the top of their head. You can also bring a water sample to most fish stores and they'll test it for you for a couple dollars.

Then you get to do the fun part go to the search page -use the advanced cat-elog search on the bottom right and plug in your pH and fish browse! I tried searching for a PH from 7-8 and you'll still have TONS to choose from. The temperature can be popped in as well if you know what temp you like to keep your tanks.

Was there a particular fish that you really want? Maybe the people here can suggest a similar fish.

[racoll]

Have a read here Greg. Should answer some of your questions.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... cle_id=332

[Greg Curtis]

Thanks again guys. I've decided to just let the ones I choose to adapt to my water conditions and not screw around buffering water which could lead to more problems. L Banana I didn't know about the advanced search feature specififying water condition, size etc. Thanks that was the biggest help so far. Now I can just match my choices with my water conditions. Problem solved!

[L number Banana]

L Banana I didn't know about the advanced search feature

Took me a while to glom onto that feature but it's awesome! I've found that many of the cats that show No Data are quite rare but not all of them. Also keep checking at the bottom of the species page for the Shane's World articles and the catfish of the month (CotM) lots of great info there too. May as well just throw your watch away...you'll be there for hours

[sidguppy]

with a ph of 7,4 you're no way in trouble, very close to neutral water.
likely to be medium hard as well. very soft water easily turns acidic and very hard water often goes to a ph of 8 or more.

many of the south American species and Asian species do just fine, except those from Blackwater biotopes or peat bogs.
there's an enormous list of pleco's from brooks and streams. especially the ones from sandy or pebble biotopes are used to neutral water.
anything from Rineloricaria, Chaetostoma, Ancistrus, Loricaria and a host of Ancistrinae are from there. Corydoras will like it, Pimelodus and several larger pims, many Doradids etc

another great place with a plenty fish that can handle neutral water is central- and west Africa; home to many Synodontis, Anaspidoglanis, Amphilius, Clarias etc.

Asian catfish not from peatbogs but neutral water include many Sisorids and Akysis, but these can be fragile; they cannot cope with heat.
Pseudomystus, Mystus, Kryptopterus, Batasio and many others will do just fine.

you can easily "boost it' a wee bit into the ph 8 range with a lot of limestone or crushed shells in the biofilter.
then Riftlake biotope catfish can be kept and a whole list of weird critters like Lophionagrus, Phyllonemus, the many day active Tanmganyikan and Malawian Synodontis etc.

do you plan to set up a small tank or a big one?

[Greg Curtis]

Sid, I've got a 90g I'm using for my pleco tank. Going to keep it South American not African. Didn't think the water ph was too far off but have to check the hardness. Thats harder to adjust than the ph. Raising it isn't a problem but lowering it is. I may just leave it alone as I don't like using buffers as they are too unpredictable. Don't want to de-stabilize the water and stress out any fish.