calcuim carbonate rocks

[dolphinsrok]

Just purchased theese rocks that are Calcuim Carbonate rocks from Caribe Sea. Not sure if they will raise the ph too much, guess I can check by letting them sit in my quarintine tank and testing. Anyone uised these before, I have a 35 gallon cichlid african cichlid tank that like the high ph

[Metageologist]

they chould be fine for a cichlid tank.

what is your current PH

[dolphinsrok]

Hi, right now I found a good steady ph level between 7.9 and 8.3 by just using 3 teaspoons of baking soda right after every h20 change. Before I used baking soda the ph was down to 6.0. I'm thinking I can stop using baking soda altogether since the size of the ricka are pretty large. For substrate, I'm using flourite with a layer of white fw sand on top. Unfortunately i thought it would work but the cichlids dug up all the flourite and the tank doesn't have that nice sandy white bottom I wanted to see. I'm getting rid of all the substrate and replacing with sand only. The flourite was meant to help the plants but after trying to be hardheaded I realized a cichlid tank that is heavily planted will most likely not work. I'll post some pics, I'll be hacking on the tank this weekend, can't wait!

[SW Addict]

If I could, I'd like to make a recommendation for sand. I used a medium grain Aragonite sand in my tank. The aragonite helped buffer the water to a good pH, plus it was course enough for the cichlids to use and it stayed down and didn't get suspended in the water column at all.