New apartment water is pH 8.6, options?

[Pylor]

The apartment that I'm moving to in about 2 weeks is water-serviced by a company that uses the local city's lake as a source of water. It's been 6 years since I had fish, but I remember checking pH with the stick strips (I didn't know about the $20 test API test kit) and it being ~7.4-7.6 when I had fish before. Now, the fish that I prefer are smaller community fish, I don't really enjoy semi-aggressive fish as it causes me to fret usually unnecessarily. The problem I now face is that most of the small fish I enjoy prefer slightly acidic water (or atleast neutral). Here's a list I've come up with of fish I'd like to slowly add to the tank after cycling, watching for chemistry changes:

Now, I've read a lot about pH and basically everything says to not mess with it as it can cause a lot of problems. That's probably fine and all if you're at a 7.8 or so with these fish, but I'm likely going to be atleast 8.4, which just won't work. I usually re-add water using 5 gallon buckets where I mix prime/whatever else in before adding it to the tank. Will this water be ok if I add some pH down to it and then maybe some pH 7 buffer to keep it steady? What are my other options, finding drinking water delivery services?

 

[Brookster123]

Did you test after letting the tap gas off over 24 hrs? Don't use any ph adjustment chemicals, they are garbage.. The swings will do more harm than good long term.

 

[japbart]

Driftwood. If you can put as much in there without making the tank look overcrowded then do it. Indian almond leaves also lowers ph but leeches off tannins.

 

[Pylor]

Thanks for the replies guys. I was already planning on adding some driftwood in, but the pH seems so high that it wouldn't really bring it down enough. I apologize for giving incorrect information, 8.4-8.6 is what I tested my current house water at last night, the actual pH readings generated by my new water company were a pH of 9.4 average. I haven't had a chance to test the water actually coming out of the tap, perhaps it will be lower, but I wanted to see what I could do to prepare ahead of time.

So no, I didn't wait 24 hours, as I can't actually test the water just yet. I'm just going off of what the water company actually found when they tested their own water. http://www.cwlp.com/water/purification/WQR2012.pdf - a link to the report, check the very last page.

And I'm not sure how the "swings" would affect the fish negatively, let me explain my thought process and I'll have you tell me where I'm wrong:

1. I use chemicals to get the pH to around 7 and then add pH 7 buffer to keep it from getting altered too much, all this is done before the fish enter the tank
2. All future water additions (after changes) are done via 5 gallon buckets where I lower the pH with chemicals then buffer it to 7 with chemicals, then add the water in.

If that's done, shouldn't there not be any "swings" since I'm ensuring all water that enters the tank is at a proper pH? What if I fill up the buckets with water to add in 48 hours ahead of time, then add the chemicals after 24 hours, then check again after another 24 hours?

 

[Brookster123]

If the ph is infact that high your best bet would be investing in an ro/di systen

 

[japbart]

If the ph is infact that high your best net would investing in ro/di systen

+1

Your fish will thank you for this.

 

[Pylor]

I don't know much about RO water generation (the only time I've used it is in organic chem labs), but doesn't RO essentially remove EVERYTHING from the water? So instead of adding chemicals to lower the pH I'd be removing everything from the water and then adding chemicals back into the water? Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but if all I want to do is lower the pH of my water do I really need to spend $140 (quick price check for a small 100gpd RO unit) plus whatever filters (isn't RO water ran through a membrane?) need to eventually be replaced and go through the hassle of trying to hook that up in my 1 bedroom apartment JUST to lower my pH down? If so, I'll look into it once I get settled, it just seems kind of over the top to someone who hasn't yet researched RO in depth and only has a 29 gallon tank atm.

That being said, thank you for your responses, it's much appreciated to get some feedback

 

[Mebbid]

Skip the ro / Di and just go with the reverse osmosis. The deionization is just overkill. The ro removes many things from the water so its best to mix it with straight tap water so it isn't nutrient deficient.

The swings is ph are very stressful for fish and that's generally what happens whenever you use the bottled ph products.

 

[Pylor]

I've tried to educate myself as best as I can on reverse osmosis and this is what I've learned/inferred so far, please let me know if I'm missing anything:

• RO/DI is mostly used in marine tanks to filter out phosphates/heavy metals/etc that are lethal to sensitive marine invertebrates and such. They're not exactly good for freshwater fish either I'd imagine
• DI is another stage that further purifies water and likely wouldn't be necessary for freshwater (I have no interest in marine)
• RO removes a large portion of necessary minerals and basically creates an extremely soft water, which (lowers the pH?) allows the pH to fluctuate more rapidly and easily, as it removes buffers
• A freshwater mix is necessary in order to add hardness\minerals back in

Let me know if I'm wrong and/or missing something, but even if the water did have decent pH it doesn't seem like it'd be a bad thing to have RO water. I'm leaning towards an aqua fx dolphin, does anyone have any further input on my above statements or choice of RO unit?

 

[ArtistGardener]

I live in an area where my tap water (after sitting 24 hours) is 8.2-8.4 pH. I have neon tetras, corys, livebearers and other fish on your list. All of my fish seemed fine at this pH because the local stores also have water this hard and alkaline. Even though my fish seemed fine, I found battling algae an issue and my plants struggled somewhat. I decided to try and lower my pH to a more reasonable 7.8-8 (without chemicals). I invested in a very inexpensive DI unit made by API. I would prefer to have an RO system but don't have the room to store water (among other reasons). The replacement cartridges are expensive, but the unit isn't. Using half DI and half tap, my water now stays between my target of 7.8-8.0. With water as hard as yours and mine, driftwood can't be relied upon to lower the pH as there is just too much buffering capacity.

 

[Coyne]

My tap water's pH is in the 8.4 - 8.6 range, just like yours. I've been keeping small community fish (rasboras, corys, small tetras, etc) with no issues for almost a year now.
I do keep driftwood in my tanks, and in one tank I have peat in the filter. This gets me into the 7.8 - 8.0 range and, again, my fish appear healthy and I'm not plagued with unexplained deaths. I DO have bad luck with mollies, but my understanding is that they usually prefer alkaline water... So I think that's a different issue.

 

[Pylor]

I went ahead and bought a 100GPH aquafx RO/DI setup as it was only 20 some dollars more than the plain RO and I figured it might help in resell-ability if someone wanted one for a saltwater setup.

I bought some seachem alkaline/acid buffer and some seachem equilibrium, though I'm not sure which needs to be added first.

Hopefully this results in healthy fish that last a long time, as I'll probably be ordering atleast some of them online. My local freshwater fish stores are awful, maybe because they use the local water). I'd rather spend money now and keep fish alive thsn spend it later and plus have to replace fish.

Edit: I should probably re-iterate since I can't edit the thread title, but the pH is actually over 9.

 

[kevan07]

My tap water's pH is in the 8.4 - 8.6 range, just like yours. I've been keeping small community fish (rasboras, corys, small tetras, etc) with no issues for almost a year now.
I do keep driftwood in my tanks, and in one tank I have peat in the filter. This gets me into the 7.8 - 8.0 range and, again, my fish appear healthy and I'm not plagued with unexplained deaths. I DO have bad luck with mollies, but my understanding is that they usually prefer alkaline water... So I think that's a different issue.

This is slightly off topic but just to clarify you are keeping tetras and rasboras in a tank with 8.4-8.6 ph or are they in the tank with 7.8-8.0 ph? I have the same type of water and always assumed I could never keep tetras because of the high ph. What types of tetras do you have?