fishenthusiast
Aquarium Advice Addict
My tank's water has a pH of 7.4-7.6 and I would like to reduce it to the 6.5 range. Would Red Tiger Lotus help? Thanks
Any reason you're trying to lower pH?
And lotus will not reduce your pH. And peat might give you black water, not entirely sure.
Actually most fish will do fine in your current pH range. Unless you have wild caught specimens or are trying to breed a species such as Discus, there's no need to alter your pH at all. Tampering with pH can actually create more problems.
Which fish?
I have a red tiger lotus and my pH is 7.8 - it hasn't done anything to adjust my pH.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Aquarium Advice mobile app
Adding peat isn't going to hurt anything, but it will yellow the water color. It may not reduce the pH as much as you'd like either because of your hard source water. A better bet would be to cut the hard tap water with rainwater, r/o, or distilled to lower the hardness and ph.
As jeta said you have hard water which essentially means your water is buffered and will resist being altered.
As long as the ph is stable and the water is clean your fish will be fine.
Okay. I'll probably experiment with the peat moss though. Maybe I'll have some success. I wish there were acidic buffers that were planted tank friendly. I remember when I had an African Cichlid tank and I never had to mess with the pH. Curse my local water company!
Just start adding in a portion of distilled, reverse osmosis, or rain water, it'll cut the hardness and pH down on it's own by dilution.
In addition to the above, I've had Rams in water that was in the 8s for pH. They did fine. Keeping it stable in the mid-7s will be better for all of your fish than trying to maintain an artificial pH, especially if you can't do so consistently.