pH for neon tetra, cardinal tetra and guppies?

[moldyform]

Gday

Ive currently got a pH of around 8.1 in my tank and am struggling to get it lower.

What is the ideal pH for these fish?

Whats the best way to keep the pH stable?

Could the little bit of shell grit I have in the substrate causing the rising pH?

Should i be measuing the TDS? Or just the pH?

Help would be great

Cheers

[semurphy]

Fish will do better in a pH of 6.8-7.

Best way of getting water stable is test the water, add pH down, then give it 10-20 minutes to circulate and dissolve. then test it again. therefore instead of testing the pH and changing it over a few days do it over a few hours. this should bring it to within the right levels.

regular testing and alterations to the pH after the initial doses will keep it stable. after that should be pretty easy.

The shell grit in the substrate would definitely be causing the increase. try and take it out, as well as any other forms of limestone. These will increase the pH and cause it to become more alkaline.

pH is mainly the only thing i test for, I am unsure about the TDS though.

good luck

[moldyform]

Awesome Thanks for that.

[Skippy]

therefore instead of testing the pH and changing it over a few days do it over a few hours. this should bring it to within the right levels.

I've gotta disagree with the suggestion of dropping the pH rapidly, pH is a logarithmic scale so a pH of 8 is 10 x more alkaline than a pH of 7, that's quite a change for the fish to make in a couple of hours.

Have you measured the pH of your tap water?

[moldyform]

Yes, tap water is around 8 at the moment. But it seems to fluctuate from 7.5 up to 8.2.

So a slow decrease of pH is the go?

I might start by removing the shells and see how it goes.

[Link2Hell]

check your carbonate and general hardness as you can have

a high pH but low carbonate level

for the tetras neutral/acid is best so between 6.5 - 7.2 pH

the Guppies prefer higher pH so they will be fine in what you

have out the tap

there a numerous products that will reduce pH but you still need

to know what carbonate value you have

[moldyform]

So a mid pH around 7.5 should satisfy both the tetra and guppies?

Ill check the KH & GH sarvo. What should they be reading?

[semurphy]

I work in a aquarium shop where we lower the pH of our tanks to neutral using this method all the time. Have never had any problems. Because the pH is at 8 it will take a lot of pH down to bring it down slowly as suggested, as usually pH rises again during the night. try it, see how it goes, if it doesn't take my advice and see how that goes.

Of course it's always better for fish to transition conditions gradually, however when it comes to pH it's not so effective in practice, you may have some success with doing 0.5 at a time but any less than that you'll probably end up bashing your head against a wall when you're back to where you started the next day.

[semurphy]

as for the 7.5 pH to satisfy both, whilst guppies do better at slightly higher pH they can still thrive at the lower pH where as tetra (especially neons) are generally less forgiving and tend to choose death over adaptation when it comes to pH, so my advice would be sticking to a lower pH

[moldyform]

Hi I did a 70% water change yesty. Prior to that I had a KH reading of 71ppm and a GH reading of 107.

I also removed the majority of the shell grit (along with half teh substaite!)

So ill see how it goes now.

Cheers

[Link2Hell]

good move to take out the shellgrit as this only adds to the calcium buffing

remove any other things like shells or coral if you have any also

hardness levels aren't too excessive and with gradual reduction as Semurphy has

noted should bring it down to Tetra happy as close to 7.0-7.2 as you can get it

adding some wood will also help but may leach some tannins and give the water

a brownish tinge

[moldyform]

Got a fair amount of drift wood in there already.

Some of the fish look a little bit sickly. Ill post some pics tomorrow.

Thanks for the pointers guys!