Re: [Killietalk] pH - Am I worrying about it too much?

["Edd Kray" <edd at catfishnthecrawlers_com>]

Although I don't worry about it too much either, I have real doubts about
all the literature that prescribes soft acid water for virtually all
killies. I think it's an "old wives tale"

For decades I've had very soft water supplies from which my tanks would fall
from an initial pH pf 7 or so into the 6's and 5's and even 4's within a
couple weeks from a water change. I can attest that pH's below 6 do not make
for happy healthy fish.

I tried a mix with RO water plus Kent RO Right a couple weeks ago that was a
disaster. Within less than a week everyone of my 59 freshwater tanks had a
pH of 5 or less. An "emergency" water change with 20% of my tap water
brought them back up to neutral and made the fish much more comfortable.

My observation is that long-term maintenance under acidic conditions (below
6) makes for weak unhealthy fish.

When do I get maximum egg production? Yes, right after a water change when
the pH is neutral or slightly alkaline.

Edd

-----Original Message-----
From: killietalk-bounces at aka_org [mailto:killietalk-bounces at aka_org] On
Behalf Of Barry Cooper
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2007 12:55 PM
To: killifish discussion list
Subject: Re: [Killietalk] pH - Am I worrying about it too much?

Note the correction to my message below - I omitted the crucial word, 
not. I meant to say "as long as they are NOT moved from low to very high 
pH". In other words, avoid sudden changes in pH.

BC

Barry J. Cooper
Sweet Home, OR 97386



Rich S wrote:
> Barry - Our water is pretty hard.  I checked it once with some test strips
and it was off the scale.  After I cut it 6:1 today it was 40 kh and 30 gh
but honestly I don't have a clue what that means except that it is way lower
than straight tap water.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>
>   
>> Rich,
>>
>> how hard is your water? If it is pretty hard, cutting it with RO may be 
>> useful anyway.
>>
>> Most killies would probably tolerate pH 8.8 as long as they are NOT moved

>> rapidly from a low pH to such a high pH. Some people dismiss pH as 
>> unimportant. Within reason, that is probably true. However, I have 
>> personally experienced injuring fish by inadvertently moving from one 
>> extreme to the other. You might want to set up some tanks for a while to 
>> see how the pH settles out. Especially when you have fish in the tank 
>> the pH will often fall somewhat. That will partly depend on the 
>> buffering capacity of your water (i.e. alkalinity, sometimes called 
>> carbonate hardness) as well.
>>
>> Barry
>>
>> Barry J. Cooper
>> Sweet Home, OR 97386
>>     
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