pH

["Kathryn Olson" <Kathryn.Olson@vmmc.org>]

Tim,

We're lucky up here in Seattle and our water is pretty soft.  When we =
lived on one side of town pH came out at 7.  With peat it hit the low 6's =
but we wanted 5's for fish we were spawning.  Erik experimented with some =
chemical ways of altering....hope he pipes up with the name of the =
compound.  The key thing here was to age the water.  We would add a small =
amount of this stuff drop the pH into the 2's (stomach acid) and as it =
sat/aged it would gradually climb into the 5's.  Don't want to do that to =
your fish....kill them and your plants.  We would them add the aged water =
to the tank.  Afriend uses waters of the world...and keeps adding it until =
his plants melt.

Now we live where the water is even softer, with no additives our bog wood =
drops the pH into the 4-5's.  Have to harden the water and raise the pH =
for some of our fish.

Kathy