"El Roberto" wrote in message
...
Hey there, the saga continues...

I have had my 23 litre tank for 4 weeks now with one goldfish in it, and
now it seems to be fully cycled. There's a plant in there, the fish is
extra happy, and I've been adding bacteria every so often too.

Anyway, I've bought a heater and am now intent on getting rid of the
goldfish (tank's too small, I have found a bigger one for him) and want to
put some neons and platys in my tank. So far so good, however... every
time I take a sample of my aquarium water to the local aquarium shops
(I've done this with two of them so far), they tell me that my water's too
alkaline for tropical fish and I need to lower it.

So basically I was given a piece of wood that will apparently lower the pH
(don't know the name of it, but anyway...). However, I've been doing my
own pH tests and the readings are showing a pH of 7, which as far as I can
see is fine for tropical fish.

I'm starting to think that there's a problem with the water I'm taking out
of the aquarium: basically I've been using the gravel pump to fill a 300ml
Evian bottle before driving off to the aquarium, sometimes leaving the
water in there for a couple of hours before it gets tested. Could this
have affected it in transit? Am I doing something wrong here?

It's all a little confusing: needless to say I can't wait to get these
fish but I want the pH to be just right. As I've said in other posts my KH
is just about zero, the tap water here is very soft in comparison and thus
the buffering capacity isn't great.

Any suggestions? I don't want to have to wait for weeks / months for the
piece of wood to do its work - sounds a bit crazy, really.

help!

Robbie




your lfs are idiots
platys and neons like different water so ya gotta comprimise anyway
I'd chuck a little bit of shellgrit on the bottem
and the bit of wood
and start stocking
pH is never a problem if you keep up small regular water changes