I know everybody suffers from PH problems at one time or another, mainly as tap water is never what you want it to be, but can I just go on record as saying NEVER use PROPER PH if you already have fish in your tank

Was in my lfs today chatting to some staff I'd got to know well when a lady came in and starting telling everyone how the local pet store had recommended she filled her tank which had a PH of 8.2 with PROPER PH 7.0, she apparently ended up with a VERY cloudy tank which freaked her out but was recommended to leave it be, but because of the extreme PH change that was happening, her fish were also stressing out and of 23 fish all but 2 died. she had the tank setup for 3 years woth no problems and the fish had become acustom to the levels

she went back to the store, just to be told she should of read the instruction alot better, but she had brought the instructions into the LFS and it didnt warn anywhere of the dangers of extreme PH change.So can I just recommend you don't use this prouct unless you are starting the tank from new and are prepared to always pay alot to use the product at every water change.

and I would like to recommend: never ever use ANY chemical in the tank except for Prime or its equivalent.

By the way, PH chemicals, if you have live plants, will kill off the plants.

Allow the natural processes take care of any imbalances in the water parameters...if your PH is too high, if you put real malaysian wood in the tank, the ph will slowly come down. If you have a good dose of bacteria in the filters the ammonia will come down. If you have 0 ammonia most likely your nitrite level will remain a constant 0. If you have enough live plants, the nitrate level will be low (as well you do not want to overfeed, which affects all these tests: ammonia, nitrite, nitrate). If you have good surface agitation, you will have plenty oxygen in the tank. If you have fish poop in the tank (which is a given) you will have plenty iron in the tank for the live plants. If you have good bacteria in the filters you will have a very low level of phosphates in the tank. I hope you are getting the drift....

Nature will take care of nature, it's been doing this for millions of years, even way before us humans intervented. Routine & observation are what fishkeepers are required to do. Chemistry & math follows observation which will tell you what to be routine on. Simple stuff pal.

Fish stores are there for one reason: to make money. Even though I have come to frown upon so called "experts", the only author I do trust (with some variance) is Peter Hiscock. BUt even he has some more things to learn...he frowns upon natural sunlight, algae, no vacuum clean...I do not mean to be arrogant, but even Peter Hiscock is downright wrong on these matters and he has college degrees in marine biology.

So if you take anything from all the typing: no chemicals & let nature take care of nature & observe and routine on the human part.

Happy fishing!