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pH, take it easy !

It is important to know what your pH is
but
DO NOT change it too fast or too drastically.

Let's say you had pH 6.0 water
and wanted it to be 7.0....
best thing to do is mix up a batch of pH 8.0 water
and change half the tank.

I checked the tap water from the faucet for a reading = 6.6
In future might be a good idea to add a small amount of baking soda or other alkaline buffer to the tap water before putting it in the tank
I checked the pH in tank with the high pH kit = 7.4
I checked the pH in the tank with regular pH kit = 7.6
It's normal for test kits to be off by a small amount like that, doesn't matter that much

Nitrite and ammonia both 0.
Great!

How did I go from 8.8 in the morning to a range of 7.4-7.6???

I had initially tested the water after a full night of filtration and came up with 8.8?

When I take new tank tests, I always take them twice. I'm certain twice the reading said 8.8 this morning.

Have you ever seen this sort of thing? Is it a fluke?

I left one thing out when I sent you the email this morning. Before I placed the mbunas in their new tank yesterday in error, I put in pH down.
The pH Down could have taken 8 hours to work, that's why any changes should be down with an overabundance of caution
I took a reading a half hour later and discovered my mistake when the pH went from 7.0 to 6.4. I believe to correct it, I put in one scoop of pH-up per gallon to raise it and possibly another dose of the same measurement to raise it more - all at once. Do you suppose introducing this much caused the chemistry of the tank to go haywire?
Yes.
Put whatever chemicals you need into some separate water, let mix completely, then add PART of that water to the tank.

If placing the cichlid substrate buffers my pH at around 8.0, should I be concerned about how it affects the chemistry of the water initially?
Not really.
Shall I adjust the pH to 8.0-8.2 and then introduce the substrate over the next few weeks - is that the most appropriate way to do it?
As far as the dolomite or crushed coral in an african tank, I'd just put it right in...
the advantage of dolomite is it does not run dusty...
the advatage of Aragonite or Crushed Coral is it buffers longer (say 5 years instead of 3 years)