Heh, I'll never have a FW tank without a sump again. Once you go sump...

Tony you're in the South aren't you? The water coming out of the Glenmore res is always pretty hard, my FW tanks ran above 8 most of the time. I'm actually surprised your tap water is testing that low, could be CO2 in the water that out gasses after it's been sitting a bit. Fill up a glass and leave it overnight, see if the pH rises.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Yeah I bet that's it. I'll try it, thanks!

Yep .. You totally called it midgetwaiter. :) Tested pH of some tapwater from yesterday and it was 8.3.

HAHAHA Freaking awesome! And no my planted tank is around 8x, It would be chaos in there any higher.

My planted tank is around 15x. :biggrin:

That said, I tested my tank today (for the first time, my J & L order came in [yay!]) and it was much higher than expected, around 7.4. I thought this was strange, since this tank is filled with distilled water... any ideas anyone?

your substrate and aquascape could also be part of the problem for your high pH. Limestone, coral rock and coral sand will jump your pH and fast. Wood will also absorb pH if you are still having problems.

Thanks - actually I don't have any coral based substrate or limestone in there as Calgary water is already pretty hard to begin with.

I did figure out it's the source water to blame (lot of limestone upstream).

I ended up cranking the CO2 (2 bubbles per second or thereabouts) to get pH down a bit. The end result is this (funny you brought this thread back to life 5 minutes after I took this picture and was thinking of uploading it):

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...DSC_0023-1.jpg