# Lowering PH with Peat



## Ischemia (Dec 19, 2012)

Has anyone ever tried this method to lower PH? My PH is teetering on 8 and I am tempted to try to lower it a bit before I get some Female Betta in there. Also my RCS that were berried have seemed to drop the eggs. I am thinking this may be due to the high PH.

Is this a method that works by the more peat you add the lower the PH will drop? and does it stay at a stable level once it drops?


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

i think driftwood lowers ph too right? for peat i think you have to live with the tannins for life but for driftwood if you like clearer water you can prep it so it leeches less tannins into your tank.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

driftwood helps a little


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## Ron Jung (Jun 28, 2010)

Yes peat works really well so does black water extract. But as said above you will have a little darker water in your tank. How big is your tank? If not too big can you take some empty like 20L water bottles and get some water from a friend where the ph isn't so high. I know in Toronto/former North York the ph is like 7-7.1. I really don't like using the store bought stuff for raising and lowering ph. Natural is always better and hey a nice piece of driftwood always looks good in a tank.

Ron.


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## Ischemia (Dec 19, 2012)

Tank is a NPT 55g and I have 2 big pieces of driftwood in there already. I think I may have a rock or 4 that may be causing some problems....I gonna try taking them out and replacing them with some store bought aquarium specific rocks as opposed to the ones from my yard. Also I prefer the tannin coloured water so that is no issue to me. I keep Indian Almond Leaves in the water for the tannins.

Would play sand have an effect on the PH making it more akaline? I am gonna test the source water tomorrow to see what it it coming out of the tap then try to figure out what may be changing it.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

nope playsand is inert so it does nothing.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

there is a sticky about rocks somewhere, check it out


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## sig (Dec 13, 2010)

I use Viniger in SW tank 2-3 drops per 10G of water

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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

I overdosed prime to drop PH from 7.8 to 7.2, also 50% water change may help (with the one overdosed with prime). Also API sells special filter inserts to drop PH, some people use distill water to drop it to 6.5


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## Mau5 (Oct 14, 2012)

ppaskova said:


> I overdosed prime to drop PH from 7.8 to 7.2, also 50% water change may help (with the one overdosed with prime). Also API sells special filter inserts to drop PH, some people use distill water to drop it to 6.5


How does Prime help to lower the pH? To my knowledge, it's just a water conditioner, and not a pH adjuster.


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## ppaskova (Apr 27, 2010)

Mau5 said:


> How does Prime help to lower the pH? To my knowledge, it's just a water conditioner, and not a pH adjuster.


If you read instructions on "Prime" bottle carefully (amusing you have one) it says there that it stabilizes PH to 7.0. Also if you ever buy tables (medication) that stabilizes / lowers PH to 7.0 it openly says on them that it is compressed conditioner.


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## Mlevi (Jan 28, 2012)

Does your betta come from a tank / breeder where it was raised in a lowered ph environment? 

Al.


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## Mau5 (Oct 14, 2012)

ppaskova said:


> If you read instructions on "Prime" bottle carefully (amusing you have one) it says there that it stabilizes PH to 7.0. Also if you ever buy tables (medication) that stabilizes / lowers PH to 7.0 it openly says on them that it is compressed conditioner.


Whoops, my bad


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## Ischemia (Dec 19, 2012)

Mlevi said:


> Does your betta come from a tank / breeder where it was raised in a lowered ph environment?
> 
> Al.


Not sure as I have yet to purchase any the bettas yet. I just noticed that many of my berried shrimp seem to have dropped their eggs and I was hoping to have 2-3 generations hatch before the bettas get introduced to hopefully maintain my RCS population. I am thinking the high PH may be the cause.

I am also planning on doing the slow and proper acclimation process for the new fish into their new home when I get them.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

Fwiw, I've kept Bettas in tap water and they did fine. I'm not aware that they need acidic water. Even if fish come from an acidic natural environment, they are usually quite adaptable. It's typically more important to keep the pH stable, as swings in pH or hardness can cause more problems than simply having a higher than ideal pH would.

If you think some of the rocks you have may be a cause for higher pH, you can easily test them to find out if they are a problem. 

Get a bottle of CLR and drip some on the rock. If you see bubbles or foaming, it's loaded with calcium that can leach into water and affect both hardness and pH. You can also test sand and other substrates this way. Not all sand is inert. 

Though I have never tested play sand, I have tested more than six different sources of garden/concrete/builders sand, from various places in the GTA, and all of them foamed up heavily. So they were all high in calcium. No good for most FW tanks, unless it's a plant only tank without livestock, or for some of the cichlids that need hard water. It's also fine for saltwater tanks. I test anything I plan to use in a tank with CLR just to be sure it's not going to affect the water chemistry. 

Many use vinegar for this purpose, but it's a pretty weak acid and won't always react to lower levels of calcium that can still affect your water. 

CLR is harmless, rinses off cleanly and because it's stronger, reacts to most any level of calcium or lime. If the rock has any veins or streaks in it, test a few spots on it, because some veins may have calcium that isn't in the rest of the rock.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

I just read this on my bottle of prime.

"Prime™ is non-acidic and will not impact pH. "

Did they change the formula for it? or did i buy the wrong seachem prime?


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## BJJBlackbelt (Jan 31, 2013)

I still live under the theory that most fish are bred by locals in the same tap water plus conditioner that you use. From what I've learned, fish like a stable PH range. I can throw anything at them from a 6.4PH of straight distilled water which makes my plants die, or I can throw tap water at it. As long as it's always the same. 

My street was torn up this summer and fall, due to new lines in the area combined with a lead line removal and a new hot water heater...my PH has jumped from a constsnt 7.4-7.6 to what is now in the 7.8 to 8.0 range. The water was useless for the first 2 weeks and was testing as high as 8.6. 

Unless you're a breeder, I honestly wouldn't get too hung up on PH. As a beginner I was obsessed with it and I feel that I wasted too much of my time trying tinker and no doubt caused more problems than I fixed.

Now I hook my raptor up to syphon, walk it back to the drain to set the correct temp and fill things back up after adding prime. I also dose my prime to full tank volume and not to just the amount of water I removed. Call is a cheap insurance policy. 

I find that when I buy the $30 jug from Big Als (and don't get me wrong, I love big als) I go thru it faster than a $14 bottle of prime. ML for ML I think it's the best product I've seen and buy it by the case when it's on sale. Same goes for Flourish and Excel, the best value seems to be Seachem.

I'm not 100% sold on the cost of excel and long term use, but Prime and Flourish are regulars for me.


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