Dead brown leaves tea and water chemistry! Newbie, pls help!

[Arthit Prasartkul <arthitp@ksc.th.com>]

Hi all,
I've just got a trio of might-be A.agassizi 3 days ago. I'm preparing a
suitable tank for them and a hope that they will breed in a near future.
Since they love soft and acid water, I was told by Mike Wise on the list to
boil dead brown leaves to acidify and soften my local water (pH=7.5 dGH=5).
However, the water chemistry was not changed after I added the extract. I
kept on adding it along with measuring the pH, but it doesn't seem to make
any change! The water turned darkly brown and I could not see through! I am
wondering if the dGH is too high for the treat of the extract, am I right?
What should I do about this? Do the apistos actually like black water or
acidic water? The water I treated seemed to be so-called 'black-water' but
the pH stayed at 7.5! 

Do I misunderstand with something? I also wonder whether my test-kits, both
pH and GH, are correct! Thank you very much in advance..  :-)

Cheers,
Arthit




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