What should I do about my PH?

[yoshimitsuspeed]

As can be seen in my other thread I am doing a small AP set-up with my fish tanks. These tanks have always been the lowest of the maintenance setups and have changed very little for years. They have always has sand that has a lot of seashell and other calcium based media. It was never a problem but now that I am growing plants I find my PH is between 8.5-9. My TDS is between 450 and 550.

I did add a teaspoon of aquarium salt not to long ago so I am changing my water a little at a time and giving that a little time to get out of the system.

I have also heard once things are up and running it can be hard to keep the PH up.

I have tried a little PH down but it is very strongly buffered and comes back pretty quick.

The plants seem very happy and very healthy right now so I don't feel it's too urgent to get the PH down but I thought I'd get some input on a plan of attack. Should I start slowly removing media and seeing if my PH starts to come down or should I leave it for now and see how the system does?

At what point does the high PH become an issue and or what should I look for to know if it has?

If I am not going for record production is it even a big concern right now?

[yoshimitsuspeed]

Well I just did some reasearch and it turns out Marble raises the PH too.

Living 30 minutes from Marble Colorado this is a free and easy decoration to want to add to the tanks. Guess it's time to do some redecorating.