# Soft water, PH drop and substrate



## johnjo (9 Feb 2012)

Hi

I am setting up my first planted tank its 35l (gonna be low tech to start with) and am unsure if my aquasoil new amazonia substrate is going to cause problems with the PH and hardness of my tap water which in turn might cause problems for the plants and eventually fish and shrimp that i will be adding to the tank...Water PH is about 6.5 currently straight from the tap and is described as soft by United Utilities. I know fish are pretty resilient regarding PH as long as there are not major swings but worried if my PH drops too far.

With the PH drop you get from the aquasoil is it a permanent drop or temporary and do you think this will cause problems also any idea how low the PH might drop to? Suppose i could add crushed shells to the substrate to raise it a little but rather not. I was thinking of doing the dry start method to sort the ammonia out, cycle the tank and get some of the smaller plants rooted into the substrate before submerging them. P.S. I haven't even opened the soil yet so the more i know now the better hopefully!

Cheers
John


----------



## clonitza (10 Feb 2012)

It dropped to 4.5-5 in the first 6 months when using soft water (1dKH) in my aquarium, no issues with my fish though, mainly soft water ones, you can use a PH buffer if needed like sodium bicarbonate if needed.


----------



## Alastair (10 Feb 2012)

Hi John, I'm in Manchester and my water is very soft, yet I also use columbo flora base which lowers ph also the same as aqua soil. That coupled with co2 as well and I have no problems at all with my fish or plants 




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## johnjo (10 Feb 2012)

Cheers Alistair, thats good to know. I read somewhere the ideal PH level was 6.8 so that's what got me thinking I may encounter problems.

Clonitza, did your PH start to rise after the first 6 months or is it still at 4.5-5?

I was thinking of adding a light dusting of peat below the Aquasoil initially but have now read it too causes PH drop so do you think i should leave it alone and just add the Aquasoil?


----------



## Alastair (10 Feb 2012)

johnjo said:
			
		

> Cheers Alistair, thats good to know. I read somewhere the ideal PH level was 6.8 so that's what got me thinking I may encounter problems.
> 
> Clonitza, did your PH start to rise after the first 6 months or is it still at 4.5-5?
> 
> I was thinking of adding a light dusting of peat below the Aquasoil initially but have now read it too causes PH drop so do you think i should leave it alone and just add the Aquasoil?



Yes mate I'd just add the aqua soil and not bother with the peat as your water is very soft anyway 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


----------



## viktorlantos (10 Feb 2012)

These active soils has ability to stabilize the pH within normal condition.

Amazonia usually push the water to 6.7-6.8 in pH. Until you're using tap water or you have some stone decor in it there are no issues. As the water will be hard enough to keep the pH on this level.

When you go with soft water and not add anything (hard tap water or minerals) and your water has low pH, on the top of that you also injecting CO2 the soil will not be able to stabilize the pH to the normal 6.8 and will drop.

Since we run many tanks with different kind of soils i only see one disadvantage of the lower pH (6.2 we had several times because of the low pH soft water): The bio filtration is not working perfectly with lower pH. The water will be still crystal clear, but we've got hair algae usually when the pH dropped this much. And we repeated this a couple times. So you will face with algae probably if the pH drops that much. But that's my 2 cent only.


----------

