How do YOU lower the PH safely?

[INXS]

If attempting to keep/spawn blackwater species from soft and acid water - how do you recreate that water?

My first step will obviously be and RO/DI system to bring the water hardness to 0 but if I understand it correctly the PH will be neutral (7) .
Now how do you get it to 6 or 6.5 ?
I've heard that a lot of the chemicals are not too good to use as they contain phosphates and other junk that you want to keep out.
Also driftwood and peat are supposed to work slowly and discolor the water a lot.

Is there a quick and safe way?

Thanks

[Barbie]

Sadly, I'm going to confuse you even worse I think, but here goes.

RO water will have a pH to match the pH coming out of the tap at first. It will be VERY unstable there though, and the addition of even 1/4 teaspoon of acid buffer to 40 gallons will push it too low to test without the addition of some buffer to increase your kH enough to give your water the buffering capacity to stabilize it. I usually use 1 part tap water to 4 or 5 parts RO water here, but that depends on how hard your water was to start with, and exactly what you're wanting to filter out. There are numerous types of products to use to reconstitute RO water, the important thing is making sure its a recipe you can repeat indefinitely and get the same parameters, so your fish have good stable water.

Hope that helps.

Barbie

[INXS]

I understand the buffering of water (I think) . By adding bakingsoda ( not sure what quantity) to the water , it will be better able to hold the PH steady. What I would like is to take my incoming water (PH7.8 and GH 10) bring it to GH 0 and closer to a neutral 7 PH . Then add however much buffer (I'm thinking bakingsoda here because it's readily available and cheap) and something to reduce the ph to about 6-6.5 and keep it there. I would like to be able to do this safley , cheaply and easily.

So the buffer would be bakingsoda but what do I use to drop the ph?

Did I understand this correctly?
Thanks.

[Barbie]

Baking soda will definitely raise your pH, but I don't know how stable it would be, once you defeat the buffers enough to lower the pH again. You're better off using tap water to bring the kH up to the desired reading, then adding a bit of acid buffer or even a small amount of peat to lower the pH to the level you want. Tap water is even cheaper than baking soda ;) There are also available buffers like proper pH that "set" the pH at a certain level, but some of those add phosphates, and they're all going to be adding "hardness", the same as the tap water. Stable water paramters inside the window of TDS are what you're shooting for.

Barbie

[magnum4]

Yes this subject can get confusing. So to add to that again.

You can not simply mix RO water and baking soda that simply would not work. If you want to avoid mixing RO water back with tap water(which most of us do i think) then first you will need a chemical electrolyte booster that replaces more than just one or two minerals.

You need to replace everthing including Sodium, magnesium, calcium and potassium together with all the necessary minor and trace minerals, plus a small amount of carbonate alkalinity that the RO unit has removed. Except the unwanted dissolved solids, phosphate, nitrate..ect.

To do this you will need a product like Kent R/O Right or similar.

To lower the pH you can use among others, Kent pH Control Minus, which comes with very good instructions.

[INXS]

OK, I think I may understand it a little better now.

Bakingsoda will boost the KH but also the ph which isn't what I want.

Mixing RO water(0 GH) with 25% tap water( 10 GH)make my water about 2.5 GH which would be pretty good and soft. At this point I should add the PH reducer?

And pretty much any commercial PH reducer will work well?

Thanks.

[Barbie]

Any pH reducer without phosphates should, yes. Some people use muriatic acid, which is cheap, and pretty dangerous to work with, IMO.

Barbie

[INXS]

Danger is my middle name


Well - not really.