adding RO water and new fish

[T-Rexx]

just bought 5 gallons of ro water for my 60 gallon tank. i want to get my ph down a bit. but i know messing with the ph is worse for fish then having it high. since messing with the ph is so bad how much ro water should i add at a time to not kill my fish? my husband says all 5 gallons its 8% of the water. but part of me says a gallon or 2 and slowly work to 5 or more. once i add ro water to the tank how do i keep the ph stable. will it be ok? does it fluctuate? do i add the same amount of ro water each time i change the water to keep it the same ph?

 

[ezy33]

IMO don't fight your PH, your fish will adjust to it unless it's way off. Adding RO water to a FW system will delete the minerals in your system.

 

[Nimo]

What is your Ph with out trying to adjust it? I kept fresh water tanks for years with natural Ph in my water being 8.2-8.4 never had problems. The one time I tried to drop the Ph it crashed on of the systems. The fish will adapt to high Ph with no problems. Aclimation time is a bit longer for me because I do drip line and dump 50% of the water 2-3 times over 1-1 1/2 hours by the time the drip is over they are in 100% tank water and fully acclimated to it.
Unless you want the headache of constantly buying water or take the plunge and buy your own RO unit. I wouldnt recommend trying to change things.
If your system is naturaly high useing a small amout of RO water will only fluctuate the Ph temporaraly for a few hours then it will go back up to its normal state which stresses the fish.

 

[molliwopp]

8% ro and 92% tap is going to have little to no effect on your tanks ph regardless of the kh hardness of the tank water.

 

[flitabout]

If you are going to go with RO, you really have to make a big commitment. My tap has very unstable parameters. So I made the decision to go with RO. Not only do I have to hike roughly 20g of ro water in weekly. Sometimes more often than that. Then I have to remineralize it. I use seachem equilibrium. It is a real PITA and it expensive. But that is the only way I can get my parameters stable. So if yours is stable I wouldn't mess with it. I would rather just use my tap.