What water test kits do I need for a planted tank?
- Thread starter cgcaver
- Start date
IMO!
Must Haves:
Nice To Haves:
That's all I can think of, at the moment. I have all of these, but I use the ph, KH and GH more than all the others combined.
Must Haves:
- KH
- GH
- PO4
Nice To Haves:
- Iron
That's all I can think of, at the moment. I have all of these, but I use the ph, KH and GH more than all the others combined.
I would say yes to the gH,kH and PO4. Don't bother with the Fe kit. A reasonalbly reliable one will cost around $50 and up and is not necessary as long as you do regular, weekly water changes.
Len
Len
IMO!
That's the tricky part.
Test your tap water first.
If you're going to use compressed CO2, then (according to Mr. Barr) you want to make SURE that your kH doesn't fall below 3. Same with gH. You may not even have to worry about it, mine comes out of the tap kh=6,gh=13.
Po4 (phosphates) are fertilizers that you will most likely have to add. Some folks tap water already contains decent amounts of phosphates, again; check your tap water first.
kH and Po4 will be depleted faster than gH. kH you can replace with measured doses of baking SODA. We tend to use Fleet Enema for dosing Po4.
Read the Fertilization Sticky at the top of this forum for more specific dosing levels. Po4 should range between 0.2-0.5 for high-light tanks.
That's the tricky part.
Test your tap water first.
If you're going to use compressed CO2, then (according to Mr. Barr) you want to make SURE that your kH doesn't fall below 3. Same with gH. You may not even have to worry about it, mine comes out of the tap kh=6,gh=13.
Po4 (phosphates) are fertilizers that you will most likely have to add. Some folks tap water already contains decent amounts of phosphates, again; check your tap water first.
kH and Po4 will be depleted faster than gH. kH you can replace with measured doses of baking SODA. We tend to use Fleet Enema for dosing Po4.
Read the Fertilization Sticky at the top of this forum for more specific dosing levels. Po4 should range between 0.2-0.5 for high-light tanks.
Then you might not need to dose NO3. If your fishload consistently produces 10+ppm NO3, then you'll be in good shape, for a while. CONSISTENTLY is the operative word tho. At some point, your plants may grow heavily to drink down more NO3 than your fish can produce. Mine certainly do, so I dose NO3 in addition to the amount produced by my fish, just to make sure. My NO3 is around 20-25ppm around the clock: it doesn't hurt the plants or the fish, and it's a good buffer against issues like BGA.cgcaver said: