Issues with pH

[IllusionX]

I try to keep pH at around 6.5-6.8 and GH of 6-7 for the shrimps. Ever since we add aquarium salt to the tank, pH has gone up to 7.2-7.4 and GH had gone to 12.

 

[trennamw]

Stop doing anything to your water besides "aerating" it for 24 hours before using it so the pH can settle.
Without a specific reason , there is no reason to adjust your water ,and if so Ph is not the thing.
Your gh and kh are fine for most things and certainly for your platy.
They are more important then pH and as mentioned Kh is what stabilizes pH.
Seachem makes great products.
Stay away from all that are meant to adjust your water!
Your fish will appreciate the water being the same more then you struggling to make it perfect.

The OP has been through a long hard couple of months with water issues. I gave her the "you probably don't need to supplement" lecture awhile back but her tapwater situation is unique.

Michelle for what it's worth I was at our fish store today, here in Portland. It's apparently the biggest freshwater fish store in the country, the same ones who gave me the advice about using a ph test meant for hydroponics and not freaking over .25 increments.

They are on the same water supply here that is very soft and they too use a low dose of buffered cichlid salts for all their community tanks, just enough to get KH and GH each up to 3-4. The api products marketed as cichlid buffer are, in their experience, also key to stable ph. But they also believe going above 3-4 is unnecessary.

So that's the 4th (out of 4) recommendation I've gotten to not use acid/alkaline buffers (too unstable) and to either leave it alone if the tap is above 4 degrees/drops ... Or use very low doses of african cichlid buffer for KH and either cichlid salts or the seachem GH products for GH.


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