PH

[honeyrobber]

I tested my pH tonight along with the other things. My ward hardness is medium to medium low(cheap test kit not giving a ppm). My pH is high. The kit only goes to 7.6 and that is still to light of a color for what I got. I checked it 3 times and all 3 times got the same result to be safe. From raising fish before I learned not to use dechlorinators and such to make a chemical soup of the water to get conditions right. Adding distilled water will not drop it enough for the killifish which ideal is 6.8pH.

Without using pH down how can I lower the pH.?

With plants I used lemon juice which is acidic enough to lower the pH and add useful nutes. Can you do anything like this for aquariums? Someone said cycle your water through peat moss will lower the pH a little is this so and if so how much. I have till Tuesday to get my tank pH settled. My killies and my ghost shrimp are on there way so to speak. I would like to find the red cherry shrimp. Any one have them for sale and will ship?

John

[kross]

i use "ketapang" leaves from where i live.
u can probably use oak leaves from where u're from?

as for peatmoss, my fren used it and it didn't work for him....
maybe the quantity wasn't not enough.

[Ljung]

as for peatmoss, my fren used it and it didn't work for him....
maybe the quantity wasn't not enough.

maybe the peatmoss was not put at the filter for water current to run through?

or, use ADA soil....
or, leave some cabomba inside your tank and let them rot....

[honeyrobber]

Thanks all. Well as of now time is to short so I got a bottle of ph down. I will try the peat moss filtering my water aging bin.

[Mustafa]

By the way..."ketapang" are "Indian Almond" (Terminalia catappa).

Mustafa

[kross]

By the way..."ketapang" are "Indian Almond" (Terminalia catappa).

Mustafa

didn't know its scientific name.... anyway, lots of them here... didn't bother to use them as i switched to ada. don't really like black water...

[honeyrobber]

I got my killies and shrimp yesterday. I lost 2 of the ghost shrimp so far out of 14 and I only bought a dozen so still have a dozen. My killies are happy. I had to use pH down as filtering through peat was not working fast enough. I tried some hard wood leaves and like you said the water turned to like a picture of tea. It worked but you could not see through it. My green water has not really got going so I soaked some fish food flakes and mushed them. I did a pinch of each type. The shrimp like the goldfish flake better than the tropical flake. I will keep hanging around and trying to learn with these ghost shrimp. Hopefully Mustafa will have red cherries read in a few months.

[Mustafa]

Hopefully Mustafa will have red cherries read in a few months.

--The read cherries will be "ready" in a few weeks actually.

Mustafa