PH Problem

[dpothier]

Hi all,

First a little history:

I have be visiting this board since late last year when I decided to start keeping discus and have found it to be a great source of information.

I have well water with a KH=4 and GH=5, PH out of the tap is 6.4 to 6.8 after 24hours this goes up to 7.8 to 8.2.

For the last 8 months of have been using a phosphate buffer to matain a PH of 6.8 this has worked very well....

Now my problem:

I have just acquired a 135gal (72x18x24) tank and would like to set it up as a planted tank.

Since I wont be able to use phospate buffers, I've been useing Seachem Acid buffer. When I add the recomended dosage and test PH an hour later the reading is 6.5, 24 hours later its back to 7.8 I've repeated this 3 days in a row with the same results. KH is still around 4.


Thankyou for any help you can provide...

Dave

[ronrca]

Hi Dave,
Welcome to Simplydiscus!
First question I have is why do you want to lower ph?

[Carol_Roberts]

Don't adjust your pH. You water is fine for domestic discus. Just agitate your change water to stabilize the pH.

[dpothier]

There are two reasons why I currently adjust my PH.

First, back in january when I started looking into discus I found people keep discus at a ph of 7.5 but no one above 8.0... Also LFS said the 8.0 wouldn't work for discus..

Second, storing water is a problem. So water that comes out of the tap @6.5 and I add phosphate buffer to has been very convenient.

I am going to see if can find a way of storing water. How should I go about adjusting my discus and other fish to the new PH ?

[RandalB]

Dave,
I keep my Discus at 7.8 and I know about 30 People that keep them above 8.5...

RandalB

[discusnutz]

Hi Dave,

I too have a well. When I acquired my 1st discus, they came from a low ph tank, my well water comes out of the tap at 6.4, but after 24 hrs agitation..7.8- 8.0...needless to say I was busy buffering and forever messing with the water!!.......No fun for me and from what I have learned not great for the fish!

You will have to get a barrel or rubbermaid container to age your water, very important! What I did to acclimate the fish to higher PH, was several small water changes throughout the day for about a week, then voila', fish were in ph of 7.8 and thriving, as I mentioned these were my 1st Discus, and I didn't know about runts etc...but even my runts have grown....and no more messin with the water!!! I followed Carols water aging barrel idea....works like a charm...HTH

Brenda

[ronrca]

My discus are in 8.2ph tap water! ;D ;) The most important factor is stable conditions.

[dpothier]

Thank you all for the advise..

I will begin looking for some barrels..

[Northwestcoastdisc]

Hi Dave P

If your ph is too low you can add baking Soda will make ph goes up.
But be careful with baking soda can make fish PH SHOCK.

I high recommand you do is wiht baking soda with very small amount in your tank or aging tank to read PH before to do water change. It would be fine..

HTH

Duncan