pH down

[jessie]

I live in an area that has very hard water, and tap water pH is around 7.4. Works well for my malawi tank, but now I want to do South American. Don't really want to pay for the pH Down solution and have added peat to the canister filter as well as Malysian driftwood. Any ideas?

[jeffs99dime]

tap water filter. reverse osmosis filtration. both are rather expensive though. peat and lots of bogwood. live plants

[Chrona]

Also, try the acid buffer stuff made by Seachem, which is like 8 bucks for 300 gallons worth. The tap water (well actually well water) here is 7.8, and hard as heck, so I used to swirl water softener pouches in the buckets with each water change, then bring the pH of the bucket down with pH Down and THEN finally add it lol. But now, I just add in a preset amount of the buffer , so it ends up at about 6.5 each time. As long as your water is pretty consistent, this will save you a heck of alot of time and headaches. Just test to see how much of the buffer it takes to bring the bucket down to what you want once, and you're set. As a note, they recommend you also use the Alkaline buffer, so that the pH won't go too acidic all of the sudden, but I've never really had a problem with that. It's always been the other way around, but it's something to keep in mind.
And not only does it lower pH, but because it lets off lots of CO2 from the reaction, my plants are happy too ^.^

[Lady Hobbs]

My angels are in 7.6 and do fine with it. Most fish are pretty adapable to varying levels of pH and if they are doing OK, I wouldn't mess with it. You can also use "Proper pH" if you need to adjust the pH but messing with it all the time can cause more harm than good.

What kind of cichlids are you getting because many of the American Cichlids like high pH........other than discus.

[jessie]

Somebody recommended the German blue rams, very pretty fish. I don't want to do all rams though. I would like a school or two of tetras to add some color variety. I may just leave the pH alone if you think they wouldn't be that sensitive to having a slighter higher pH. Thanks for the ideas.