tank with ada amazonia readings

my 3 foot with ada amazonia is giving me ph reading of 5.5 and kh of 2 now its a lot better than my ph of 8+ of my tap water but is it safe,can i expect it to drop more? tank is going to house a very special fish soon which likes soft water i know but is this a bit much?

 

@oscar freak =1

I'm so glad that you have brought this up because I have EXACTLY the same problem except my kh is only 1... I currently have 4 x Siamese Fighter girls housed in the tank and so far so good but, what I did with this tank to bring up the ph was exchanged water with another tank that I'm also cycling which brought my kh up to 2 and my ph up to about 6.8.

Are these parameters ok or not. Could the low kh cause even more of an acid drop? I'm not trying to hi-jack the thread, I want answers too.

 

No problem skye01 im just glad i'm not only one.tank is housing a "recovering" angel and he seems to be fine just worried it might drop lower.

 

just add a bit of declorinated tap water this will raise both wont it

 

ja i know there are ways of raising it just didnt expect it to go so low.

 

How are you testing the ph? Could it be that the test kit is faulty?

 

its a sera test kit nothing fancy so i dont expect its to a certainty but the readings are totally different for each tank and in line with what i would expect from each in that ada is advertised as lowering ph and as i am using untreated tap water in the one the ph is similar to direct tap water.

 

I use seachem equilibrium in my tanks. Not much though. I also do 50% weekly water changes. This will stabalize the GH and KH to the levels in your tap water. It is absolutely crucial that you do the water changes. You can not be slack there. 50% weekly changes = the minimum you should be doing.

 

bear in mind that i am happy with this development its basically what i'v been after for a long time,i have been slacking off with the water changes because the tank has been minimally stocked that is soon to be changed.when the tank was stocked i was doing small every other day changes so as not to have a yo-yo scenario going on.i will do a 50% waterchange today and see what readings i get.

 

maybe 50% is not the way to go right away will try a 25% first.

 

nothing yet but understand shells and the like and there's always my tapwater

 

If you do 25% water changes, then you should be doing it twice a week at least.

 

Ja i can live with that,i dont want it to rise that much and if all it takes to keep it stable is 2 small simple water changes a week without adding any buffers im a happy chappy

 

i eventually did the 50% water change after 24 hours the ph went up to 6.5 but the kh remained the same

 

For kh and gh add some crushed coral to the filter. It's good that the ph has come right. Just remember that if you do 50% waterchanges and your ph is low, the ph will change very quickly. This could be very bad for your fish...

Anyway, just make sure you monitor your ph very carefully.

 

the tank is empty now so can do a bit of experimenting would like to get the correct equation down before i add fish.i do have some coral and shells i can add will try a little bit to start dont want to push it to far up.should work out nice as a breeding tank though.

 

Should be perfect. If you can get KH and GH to 4, then it will be perfect!

 

ok but now if i raise the kh will i not be raising the ph as well?