"greg d" wrote in message
news
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.

Tanganyikan cichlids would do alright in high 8s and their natural
environment goes into the low 9s. If your water is hard, so that the
high pH is natural, then most African cichlids would be fine with it. If
your water is soft and the high pH is due to chemicals added by your
municipality, then that's a bit different. If you are trying to keep
low-pH soft water fish, then your 9.0 will be stressful, selectively by
type of fish. Stable parameters can sometimes be more important, but
assess your gH and pH and then look at the types of fish which are of
interest to you. Some neutral water fishes are more adaptable, than
types from extremes.
--
www.NetMax.tk

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?