Soil - The potting soil I used contains Sphagnum Peats, doh

After reading your advice, I re-potted the plant with the speckles. I then eyed my soil tester up suspiciously. I have cheap a soil test kit so I tried that. It's very inacurate and only shows results in whole increments, PH 5, 6, 7 and 8. The results said the soil was PH 5. I went to the Aquarium and bought a more accurate tester. The results card has colours for ph 6.0, 6.4, 6.6, 6.8, 7.0, 7.2 and 7.6. I ran water through the medium and the results said the PH of the run off was 6.0 or lower as 6.0 or lower is light yellow. My tap water is PH 7. Sorry if this is too much info. I bought a bottle of PH UP (potassium hydroxide) and added 3 drops to 2 liters of water. I poured it slowly through the medium and then poured a liter of plain tap water through and tested the run off. Still light yellow. I added 4 drops to 1 liter and poured that through followed by 1 liter of plain water. Still the same result. I stopped then because I suddenly realised that I don't know what I'm doing and I may well mess things up more. Can you tell me the right process. Somethings telling me I shouldn't change the PH drastically but I dunno. Theres no instructions on the PH UP for changing soil PH, it just tells you how to correct PH before you water plants and assumes your soil is neutral anyway.

I also tested the soil (not the run off) of the flowering plant with the simple soil test kit (not the aquarium one) and that read PH 5. I will need to adjust the soil on this one also. Although this plant looks quite healthy, the buds seem to be developing slowly. In future I'm going to be much more careful with my soil choice and get PH neutral soil, run regular PH checks, and PH adjust water before watering if necessary.

Thanks for your advice, you don't know how much I appreciate it