Newbie question water quality

"Eric Schreiber" eric at ericschreiber dot com wrote in message
...
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.

How high, exactly, is the pH, and what kind of fish are you putting in
the tank? Many species can cope with a wide pH range, needing a
specific pH only for things like spawning.


The pet store folks suggested using distilled water. This
is fine with me, but I'm not sure how to go about this.

You can buy bottled water, but don't assume it has the pH you want -
test it to be sure. As you noted, though, this will mean a lot of jugs
being carried around, and in a 46 gallon tank may be expensive.

You might also look into a reverse osmosis (RO) setup. All kinds of
articles about this on the web, so give Google a look. The short of it
is that RO removes pretty much everything from the water, resulting in
a distilled end product. It can be expensive, depending on your needs.

Lastly, you can lower the pH with chemical treatment, though in general
experienced aquarists are of the opinion that the less junk you put in
your tank, the better.

Some natural approaches that have similar effect are to add driftwood
to the tank, which will lower the pH somewhat, as well as looking nice
and giving your fish something to swim around. Also, running your water
through peat moss will help lower the pH. Again, do a Google search for
this.


--
Eric Schreiber
www.ericschreiber.com

I can't improve on Eric's sage advice and only wanted to add that fish
store employees are quite often *not* a very good source of information.
Adding some DI or RO water might very well be a viable alternative, but
it would be good to start with your water basics (pH and gH or hardness)
and the type of fish you have or are interested in. It's far easier to
find fish which match your water parameters, than to constantly have to
change your water to match your fish.
--
www.NetMax.tk

On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 23:27:37 -0400, NetMax wrote:

"Eric Schreiber" eric at ericschreiber dot com wrote in message
...
greg d wrote:

You can buy bottled water, but don't assume it has the pH you want -
test it to be sure. As you noted, though, this will mean a lot of jugs
being carried around, and in a 46 gallon tank may be expensive.

You might also look into a reverse osmosis (RO) setup. All kinds of
articles about this on the web, so give Google a look. The short of it
is that RO removes pretty much everything from the water, resulting in
a distilled end product. It can be expensive, depending on your needs.

Lastly, you can lower the pH with chemical treatment, though in general
experienced aquarists are of the opinion that the less junk you put in
your tank, the better.

Some natural approaches that have similar effect are to add driftwood
to the tank, which will lower the pH somewhat, as well as looking nice
and giving your fish something to swim around. Also, running your water
through peat moss will help lower the pH. Again, do a Google search for
this.


--
Eric Schreiber
www.ericschreiber.com

I can't improve on Eric's sage advice and only wanted to add that fish
store employees are quite often *not* a very good source of information.
Adding some DI or RO water might very well be a viable alternative, but
it would be good to start with your water basics (pH and gH or hardness)
and the type of fish you have or are interested in. It's far easier to
find fish which match your water parameters, than to constantly have to
change your water to match your fish.

Thanks for the advice. I'll study up a bit more and try some of these
ideas out.

greg d