Best ways to turn hard water to soft water.

[Miltonic]

As many of you know and if you dont click here ([Only Registered Users Can See Links.]), I had a problem with putting aragonite marine substrate into my new tank, which I had to completely remove and refill my 45 gallon tank with new water and substrate.

The water where I live is neutral but after testing the water in my new tank it showed it to be around 7.6 pH, I think its mainly due to the aragonite particles left over. I basically added half a bottle of blackwater extract to my tank hoping for it go down but it didnt work out. I plan on getting peat wood hoping to help but im wondering what are other ways to get the ph down naturally.

[cocoa_pleco]

lots of driftwood and peat in the filter

[Miltonic]

do you know where i can buy some peat wood online?

i called all the stores i know off and non of them have it :/

[smaug]

If you did a good cleaning when you removed the aragonite then the higher ph is not from leftover particles,it would take a good bit of residue to cause that.As for softening your water there are many issues involved with that which could cause extra problems for you down the road.1st off,wood added to your tank will not remove hardening agents from your water,it will ever so slightly drop your ph [.3-.5 at the most} .Black water extract will not remove hardening agents either.If you truly want to remove HA then a ro filtering or deionizer are in your future,even filtering through peet does not reduce the HA in the water any big amount .All of those things do reduce ph but that is not the tell of the hardness of water.
If indeed you are certain that your higher ph is caused by left over arag then time and water changes will bring that into check in less then a month.

[Commodore 64]

7.6 is fine. Don't mess with your pH. There's nothing natural about a pH of 7 and there's no reason to maintain that. I'm also unclear as to why you think you have "hard" water that needs to be treated. Because you had some aragonite in there? Have you tested your gH and kH straight from the tap?

You don't need to do anything to your tank water other than change 30-50% of it every week.

[travie]

Your pH reading will probably be different once you get the tank up, running, and cycled. Test your pH after the cycle to read what it is at, and if the reading is in one of the extremes then rethink your stocking or pH. Otherwise, like others have said, it is in the acceptable range and not worth messing with.

[Miltonic]

The Ph of the tap water is neutral, Im not so concerned about the Ph anymore. I started to aclimate my angelfish to the harder water so I can move them over to my new tank asap since one of them has a few health problems like Ich/fin rot and their current tank is too small for them.