[BR the Betta]

Good morning all. I have a 5 gallon quarantine tank set up for some Otos i plan to purchase tomorrow. Tank is cycled, has just a sponge filter and thin layer of sand as substrate. I added a couple small plants few days ago since I am getting Otos and it has a few decorations for algae growth. I will supp with veggies & rapashy. My issue is the ph is about 7.4 in this tank and ph in main tank stays between 6.6-6.8. I added 2 doses of api ph down to q-tank (didnt want to) which helped a little. I may do a water change today with distilled to hopefully lower ph. KH has room to drop and plenty of GH, parameters below. Would like the tanks to be similar in parameters.

Thoughts on using api ph down? Distilled water?

Parameters of q-tank:
PH - 7.4-7.6
KH - 53 ppm, 3 dKH - api test kit
GH - 143 ppm, 8 dGH - api test kit
NO3 - 20-40 (working on bringing that down w/ nitrazorb)
Ammonia - 0
NO2 - 0

Thanks

 

[BR the Betta]

Quick update on quarantine tank. I had a aha moment the other day. I did a water change mixing in some distilled water and that helped bring down ph a little. The nitrazorb is soaking up the NO3 and is now down to about 10ppm. My aha moment was (probably an obvious solution to most of you here) to add in a bunch of controsoil, duh. I have it as substrate in my main tank and it keeps ph between 6.6-7.0. Tested ph & no3 this evening and the numbers are very close, so i am happy. Now if pet store will only get some Otos. They say they order 50-60 but only ever have a couple. Check again Saturday.

 

[BR the Betta]

Thanks, RO device is on the way. Getting by, thankfully with what we have. Our tap water is low KH, GH but high ph, like 8.2 on the api liquid test. Been a pain to manage but figuring things out. Will be nice to start zero and have the ability to make the water fit our needs. More learnin, but its fun.