how to lower gh ?

[wicca]

what would i do to naturaly lower the gh of a tank. i dont want chemicals of any kind as they are a pain. i prefer things like maybe oak leaves or driftwood? any thoughts

[Bratyboy2]

Ro water should work

[Navanod]

The best way is to slowly lower the GH through water change (make sure you're using low GH soft water of course, such as the RO water suggested by Bratyboy). Avoid sudden GH drop with large waterchange as that may be more stressful for the shrimps than the high GH itself.

You should also look for the source of the high GH in your tank, normally decorative rocks are the prime suspect. Good luck

[Deep6]

Many fish stores sell RO water, also a lot of the self-serve water dispensers outside supermarkets use RO water. Get a cheap ($20-25) TDS meter to make sure the RO filter is actually up to date and working. Or just get an RO system for your home, they tend to run $100-150, and if you are only using it for a shrimp tank, you can probably go a year or two between needing to buy new filter material.

[Navanod]

Check your tap water's GH first before running out and investing on an expensive RO machine. If the tap water is less than 2 GH, you can probably get away with using that, just do more small waterchanges.
Prolonged RO water use is also not ideal as certain minerals are lacking in RO water and can cause deficiencies in shrimps. Of course, one can reintroduce those minerals through shrimp products like mosura mineral plus, or mineral rocks. But why spend all that hard cash if you don't need to?

Also, do not expect driftwood or oak leaves to have GH lowering properties. These can only lower pH reliably as far as I understand.

[wicca]

my gh out of the tap is the same as it is in my tanks 7. i guess its not to bad considering the ph out of the tap is 8. thanks for the input every one

[gera]

I lowered the GH in the tank with tap water with the torf (from GH 13 to 7 in 2-3 days), the leaves of oak or cattapa do max 1 Gh in my experience..

[Navanod]

I lowered the GH in the tank with tap water with the torf (from GH 13 to 7 in 2-3 days), the leaves of oak or cattapa do max 1 Gh in my experience..

Just to clarify for the english speaking folks. Torf is ye olde peat
How low did pH fall in order for the "torf" to reduce GH by so much? Sounds kinda risky to me

[gera]

well the ph dropped from 8-7.8 till 7,5- or 7,2 i am not sure. i need to check the Ph meter. The GH I calculared from TDS and I may be wrong. But to be sure I tell you the general tds changes from 230 to 160-170 (its 2-3 days work). the parameter of water doesnt change now. But I shall check the GH by tests to be sure. My last tests of tap water showed GH 11-13 and TDS 220-230. Thank is why I can say that ph dont very much want to get more acidic!
Most effective ph reduction in my case is the use of RO.

[Navanod]

Sounds like you have some really serious calcium in your water supply gera.
Over on my end, we are somewhat lucky to have very soft water (GH 1, TDS 70, pH7.6-7.8), which was why I was not familiar with using peat to lower GH. Thanks for sharing.