Artificially changing the pH for acclimation purposes only?

[Bill Smith]

I have liquid rock here in Southern California, and the pH out the tap is 8.0. I have some mail order fish arriving soon from areas with lower pH, and I will need to get them used to my water.

Normally I'd do some drip acclimation over time, but it occurred to me that I could use pH-Down to artificially drop the pH in my quarantine tank to the right levels, and then the natural buffering tendencies of my water would bring it back up over a slow period.This should be slower than drip acclimation, and potentially much less work!

Can it be that there's a real useful purpose for pH-Up and pH-Down products? 😉

Thoughts? Has anyone tried this?

[FinalFins]

If you were to use pH down every time you do a WC you would need to measure out some pH down and add it too the new water, slowly raising the pH of the new water every time. Too much hassle IMO, just add some water every 5 min or so, or plop and drop, which i do. I got some burmese chocolate gouramis in the mail coming from Portand, (higher pH I belive) and just dropped the fish into the tank and they were perfectly find afterwards. I have all 8 of them still going strong. Also I'm sure a stable pH is better then a slowly rising one.

[Brandy]

1 hour ago, Bill Smith said:

I have liquid rock here in Southern California, and the pH out the tap is 8.0. I have some mail order fish arriving soon from areas with lower pH, and I will need to get them used to my water.

Normally I'd do some drip acclimation over time, but it occurred to me that I could use pH-Down to artificially drop the pH in my quarantine tank to the right levels, and then the natural buffering tendencies of my water would bring it back up over a slow period.This should be slower than drip acclimation, and potentially much less work!

Can it be that there's a real useful purpose for pH-Up and pH-Down products? 😉

Thoughts? Has anyone tried this?

I have not tried this specifically. But I think chemically it would work out well in a short term way. It might not be necessary, depending on the sensitivity of the fish. If you brought the tank to the appropriate pH level, however long it took to reach your normal level would be more gradual than the plop and drop method. You would be exposing the fish to one less stress at a time, and potentially that could help.

Would I do this for white clouds or danios? nope. But after my incredibly shocky tetra adventures, I am a big fan of minimizing shocks for those fish. I would STILL drip acclimate those fish because pH is only one water parameter. Your TDS/GH is likely also higher than their source water. 

Another thought I have is to use half your own water and half RO water to fill the QT tank matching their source water, drip acclimate, drop them in, and then water change slowly back to 100% tap water over the next few weeks. (I am really irrationally paranoid about tetras now, in case that wasn't obvious. please take this all with a grain of salt)

[MickS77]

I agree with @Brandy I would cut your tap water 50/50 with RODI water. If they're really soft water fish try adding some peat, something with tannins, along with the RODI water. If you don't have that I wouldn't really worry about the ph. I think drip acclimating is iffy, depends on what kind of shape they arrive in. That bag water can be really bad for the fish. I personally would just float them to temperature and scoop into the bag like a cup of water at a time, for a half hour or so. 

[Bill Smith]

Thanks guys, great thoughts!