Newbie question water quality

"greg d" wrote in message
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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!

If you wind up deciding you want to lower your pH, consider adding CO2.
You'll have the added benefit of having live plants in your tank, if you
want. Injecting CO2 is easy (lots of DIY talk on
rec.aquaria.freshwater.plants). Just make sure your KH is 5 or above,
otherwise you could get sudden pH drops.

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