How are you lowering pH?

[gvv]

I didn't exepect to get so much interesting info
But now I would like to clearify and hear your opinion on the following:
- Where to get almong leaves?
- How good are oak leaves and how much you can put per gallon for desired pH level? Can they also be used to lower hardness or they are useless?
- Aren't you afraid of acid rains to use the water in tanks? For sure it will lower the pH, but what "additions" you may introduce into the tank?
- Is it usefull to use distiller instead of RO unit?

Regards

[BigDaddy]

http://www.aquanourriplus.com carries the sweet almond leaves.  I have no experience with them personally, but I have read about their antibacterial properties...

And for clarification, oak leaves won't lower pH, nor with the almond leaves.  They are just additions to a tank to provide an optimum breeding environment for fish who typically prefer soft acidic water.

As far as rain water...   My tap water is around 7.0.  Collected rain water tested between 6.4 and 6.6

As for distilled... too costly in the long term... that's why people either do rain water or R/O

[gvv]

Thanks for clearification Bigdaddy !

Concerning distiller...
I found out that you may buy distiller for about 100, while  RO is more then 350. Why you are saying that they are too costly?

[BigDaddy]

I meant cheaper if you were buying the water directly.  For some stupid reason, it seems distilled water retails for more on average that R/O water, even though it's essentially the same thing.  The only difference is the filtration method.

There are R/O units on ebay for about 100 bucks too...

Cost wise, I'm not sure if the amount of electricity used to boil the water for a distiller would be higher than the cost of replacement filters for an R/O unit.

Plus.. I think an R/O unit will output enough water to be usable in aquaria... the distillers I saw were rated at 6 gallons per day, whereas RO units can do 100 gallons per day (well, not really, but in theory...)

[Anubias]

In his classic aquarist's manual, William Innes suggests using di-sodium hydrogen orthophophate (Na2HPO4) and sodium dihydrogen orthophosphate (NaH2PO4) in particular proportions to arrive at a stable particular pH. I used this method once to breed red-eyed tetras. It worked well. However, it is expensive and an effort to obtain. I don't have the proportions, which he did print, but which I cannot find.

You could start with 5 ppm of each, and then increase one of the ingredients depending upon whether you sought a higher or lower pH. 50 to 100 ppm  in total should give you adequate stability in a bare tank, as our KH is relatively low here in Ottawa.

The pharmacy at Slater and O'Connor could get you some reagent grade chemicals, probably above $50 per 500 grams for either of the two. I have some myself from way back.

Muratic acid works, but it rebounds some as the CO2 gets blown off.
It is also more prone to perturbation, i.e. unstable.

Regards,

[BigDaddy]

Never mind the fact that a portion of low pH spawners also prefer low TDS counts.  Adding those compounds is going to increase the number of total dissolved solids... so your kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

[Migs]

If he got the wood from Elliot Lake or Sudbury area, I wouldn't be surprised, but I never heard anything like that and I'm from Timmins...