[ladybug0103]

I have a fully cycled 36 gallon tropical tank set up. My tap water is a bit of a mess and I'm wondering what I can do to fix it. I know messing with pH levels can be a nightmare but 8.5 seems too high for my fish.

Tap water...

pH 8.5
KH 110
GH 155

 

[corina savin]

What kind of fish are you keeping?

 

[ladybug0103]

Platys, Skirt Tetras, Zebra Danios, Kulhi loaches, 1 bristlenose pleco

 

[Cspencer83]

well if you want to lower your ph a bit without chemicals you can put a piece of orange in there which your fish will nibble on and it will lower your PH my gold fish eat oranges and there is a huge difference between my Tropical tank 7.6 PH and my goldfish tank 6.6 PH. Your fish might like to snack from the orange and it will lower the PH I just take a piece of the orange and brake it open and throw it in but you can clip it to the side of the tank using clips but my gold fish just like to snack from it on the bottom of the tank and i take out the skin later.

 

[corina savin]

I am sure that a piece of orange will lower your pH. It has citric acid and ascorbic acid. How healthy are those for fish? I don't know...I know that high doses of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) can lead to oxalate based kidney stones in humans. How about the sugars in the orange? Glucose and fructose are likely to fermentate. One by-product is alcohol. So not just the pH but the water quality will go down.
The natural way to lower the pH is humic acid. You can try peat granules in the filter. Almond leaves. Driftwood. The live bearers will not be happy. Tetra will thrive. Good news is that fish will adapt to any reasonable pH your tap water is offering. Breeding wild caught fish is another story...
Clean, stable water parameters are more important for fish health than "ideal water conditions"
People are reporting receiving shipped fish in miserable conditions. They plopped them in quickly in tanks with "ideal conditions". The fish died.

 

[Cspencer83]

I am sure that a piece of orange will lower your pH. It has citric acid and ascorbic acid. How healthy are those for fish? I don't know...I know that high doses of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) can lead to oxalate based kidney stones in humans. How about the sugars in the orange? Glucose and fructose are likely to fermentate. One by-product is alcohol. So not just the pH but the water quality will go down.
The natural way to lower the pH is humic acid. You can try peat granules in the filter. Almond leaves. Driftwood. The live bearers will not be happy. Tetra will thrive. Good news is that fish will adapt to any reasonable pH your tap water is offering. Breeding wild caught fish is another story...
Clean, stable water parameters are more important for fish health than "ideal water conditions"
People are reporting receiving shipped fish in miserable conditions. They plopped them in quickly in tanks with "ideal conditions". The fish died.

I don't mean putting it in and just letting it stay in there and let it ferment. I have read online in more then one place that oranges for fish will actually raise there immune system like it does ours when they eat it but yes i would not over do it with them because of the sugar content adding fruits to there diets is something that should be sparingly where vegies are a more often thing just do the research on what ones for the fish you have. Like my goldfish and my guppies both love bananas, I feed them a pea mush with fish food mush that i just put into little balls for both of them for digestive health usualy 2 times a month. My gold fish also get lettuce and stuff but most of what my gold fish get is good for tropical fish too.

 

[loveschool]

From what I read, keeping pH stable is much more important than trying to adjust it and many fishes can adapt to wide range of pH just fine. I'm not sure if yours are among those. Anw this video pretty much sums up methods you can use to lower pH

fyi, my tap water pH is also pretty high ~8.2 and my fish are doing well. I currently have neon tetra, guppy, molly & swordtail and planning to get some harlequin rasbora