On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 04:38:17 -0500, Dick wrote:

On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 00:34:33 GMT, "greg d" wrote:

My wife and I are new to the aquarium world and setup our first aquarium
a couple of months ago. We're having a terrible time getting the pH
level down to where it ought to be (we have a plain tropical, freshwater
aquarium - 46 gal). It turns out that our municipal water is just too
high a pH and not good to use in the aquarium. The pet store folks
suggested using distilled water. This is fine with me, but I'm not sure
how to go about this. I don't want to lug a zillion 1 gallon jugs of
distilled water from the supermarket and am looking for other options.
Is it convenient and/or cost effective to get home delivery of dist.
water? To somehow make my own? Will bottled drinking water work
instead? I'd appreciate any ideas from anyone who's grappled with this
in the past. Thanks!

greg d

How high is high? I use tap water in 5 tanks. The pH is close to 8 and
I keep a variety of fish. Any modification you make to your tap water
traps you into maintaining that condition.

That's a good question. My water testing kit says it's around 7.8. When
the people at the petstore tested it, they said it was 9.0, and that's on
two occasions at two different stores.


You say the tank has been up for a couple of months, but you seem to now
be wanting to make adjustments. So, I wonder, are you having problems
with your fish or plants or are you just thinking you want to have ideal
chemistry?


I'm not looking to make any changes to the chemistry, just add a few more
fish. We have zebra danios and platys so far (8 fish total), and wanted
to add some kind of algae eater. Anyway, when we took our water in for
them to test, they said we should fix the water before getting any
additional fish b/c it would kill them. The fish
we have now, though, seem perfectly fine, which perplexed the folks at the
pet store a bit. Although, even if the fish seem fine, I'm not sure if
there are long term effects of them living in water with that high of a
pH.

Adjusting water chemistry may not fix what is broken. If it isn't
broken, why fix it?