lowering Ph

[DamianMax]

OK, after reading this thred I'm totaly confused.

I have very hard water here in Kansas City (< 200 ppm).
so before I got into the fish hobby I had a water softner with a 6 stg. filter instilled in my home (basicly turns my water into dist. water). so when I got into keeping fish I thought I wouldn't have to worry about my PH, boy was I wrong, my Ph was 9.4, so I had a friend that is the plant opp. at NKC water dept. test my tab and my Neighbors tab water. Untreated PH 8.4, KH 40 , GH 200. My Treated PH 9.4, KH >20, GH 0. so when I ask my friend about this He said that by removeing the Minerals and softning will rise your Ph. Now for the real funny part, I was using PH Down to lower my ph, had it down to 7.4 before I found out the bad sides to using chem. to lower it, so I stopped, that was over a month ago and before I had a bad Nitrate prob (not cycled) so with all the 50% water changes and all you would think that my ph would be high again. nope its at 7.0 and its been that way for a few weeks now, but my GH that started at 0 is now at 75 and my GH is at 80. i have no idea what is balanceing my readings.

I Just started a 75g tank three days ago that I doing a fishless cycle with, I'm using sand (Salaca free playground) and testing my water right after fulling my tank was - PH 9.0 , KH 40, GH 50.
testing it today and - PH 7.8, KH 80, GH 75.

so I'm a firm believer in what some of the people here has said about messing with your PH - DON'T....unless you breed, then disregard all of the above...LOL

 

[Davy]

Does any filtering lower the Ph? Like the water out of my refrigerator is filtered. Does that lower the Ph, or only RO? Oh, duh, I have a test kit. I'll just go and check.

That's the wierdest thing I've ever heard of Damian. Sorry, I don't know what's going on.

 

[tetra girl]

Re wayne at home: I dont want to raise my pH - i want to lower it and raise my GH and KH, any ideas?

 

[tetra girl]

never mind - you answered that in another thread - thanks!

 

[wayne]

Damian - some comments - this is very confusing. First of all realise that as far as I know, most household water softeners work by swapping kH ions for another set of ions (normally Na). As you need 2 Na+ ions to replace a Ca++ ion , maybe the greater number of ions could affect pH, plus there are simply more ion in the system - softeners like this work by hiding ions, not removing them - for most people , simply not having CaCO3 choking their appliances is 'softening the water'.
Your friend tested your water as gH 0 - kH 20 - not possible with my understanding of how these things are defined. I also don't believe it's likely you'll increase pH by removing minerals and softening the water - take this to it's logical end, and pure water has a pH of 7, and going towards towards purity will drag your pH towards 7.
I would guess your pH is being dragged towards 7 in your tank by increasing amounts of dissolved CO2, and/or increasing organic matter in your tank forming carbonic and organic acids - this is a normal trend. I assume that in Kansas you have household air conditioning - these can so build up CO2 levels in households that it can drag down tank pH (as C02 is very soluble in water), causing mysterious pH problems that disappear when the windows are left open for 3 days.
Nothing is ever simple, but especially it seems with heavily treated, hard , household water.