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Re: H2SO4



Thanks every one for enlighten me up on the lowering pH issue. I mentioned
H2SO4 b/c that what the bottle of pH down have. As for the RO water, I
assume that the water I use is b/c I got them from the drinking water shop
and the use the RO unit to filter the water. The kH and gH reading of this
water is pretty low, around 3-5 I don't remember exactly. The water in my
area straight from the tap is very hard and alkaline so I dont' want to
use it for plant and fish. Right now my discus and angelfish are doing
well in this water. Plants are also doing well, but I have a very bad
problem with hair algea as well as red algae and spot algae. I'm
suspecting the high pH is the cause, so I want to try. I also want to try
adding CO2 but I'm afraid that would kill the fish. I made a bottle of
yeast/sugar couple years ago for the 10 gal tank. I went to sleep and the
next morning I found
all guppies, mollies bellied up. All of the bettas were still OK thanks to
their God-given labyrinth.

> First:
> Why do you need low pH? For plants or something else?
> 
> For plants:
> Add CO2 for plants if you need lower CO2. Don't use RO or acids or any thing
> just the CO2 gas according to the pH/KH/CO2 table. There's almost never a
> reason to lower your pH with H2SO4 (doesn't this seem a little radical just
> to keep some plants? THINK about it. Do normal folks do this?). My pH out of
> the tap is very high and my hardness is way up there(410-450ppm). Plants
> don't care about those but they do care about CO2 content so if you need to
> lower your pH to get it matched up nicely with the pH/KH/CO2 chart add nice
> reasonably safe CO2 not H2SO4 which is some of the nastiest stuff out there.
> Dosing CO2 is far easier and more practical than any H2SO4 addition idea you
> have in mind.