View Full Version : Hardness and pH
what's the best (and least expensive) way to raise both?
that depends on what hardness you already have and what hardness you are tring to achieve. what is the gh and more importantly the kh of your water?
the gH is 89.5ppm
the pH is a low 6.0
This is an african cichlid tank...hence these are pretty low!! haven't checked kH yet
try a ph buffer, or try crushed coral or add rock such as limestone but i dont think it will raise the ph high enough, as it is very low at the moment good luck, could be costly.
oh and kH is 17.9......also low....
yes that is very low kh. i dont think crushed coral alone would work in your case. but you could use crushed coral along with rift lake salts made for malawi cichlids. what size is the tank?
its an 80 gallon tank.
I heard that the most inexpensive way to increase my pH etc, was to use baking soda and epsom salts...
anyone know what quantities of each I should use per gallon??
that will raise ph but does not keep it stable. and it is a guessing game. most times it will do more bad than good using baking soda or other ph up products. coral and rift lake buffers will raise the kh enough to keep things stable. the best way to go about this would be 'ageing' the water and adding the coral to the ageing container, and mixing in the rift lake buffers so that when you added the water to the tank it would be the same ph and hardness every time.
Faramir
02-20-2003, 7:18 AM
Coral will work well. I have to resort to baking soda because my water is soft but slightly alkaline out of the tap; carbonates will not dissolve in alkaline water. But your water is acid and will quickly be brought up by coral.
so can I just put crushed coral in as part of the filter media, to keep it out of site?
Harry Tolen
02-20-2003, 3:14 PM
I would start with some crushed coral in a media bag. You can indeed put this in your filter to keep it out of sight. The pH, KH, and GH should all start rising from this addition. After a month, check your parameters and then you can decide what additional buffers, etc. to add.
By the way, is this what your water is like out of the tap, or is there some bioacidification going on here? What are your water maintenance and filter cleaning routines?
the water straight from the tap is neutral....
I do 25% water changes weekly.
JSchmidt
02-21-2003, 9:26 AM
Is KH the same out of the tap, or is it being depleted once its in the tank?
If pH is neutral (7.0) out of the tap, but is 6.0 in your tank, you either have some pretty significant bioacidification going on, or you water may be treated with the lime-soda method by your water utility. (See http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/softening.html for an explanation.)
To me, the most likely scenario is that your water has little KH coming out of the tap, and the 25% water changes aren't enough to keep ahead of the acid produced as ammonia/nitrite are oxidized, causing pH to drop.
If this is what's going on, adding buffers will do the trick. Crushed coral, either as a substrate or in the filter may be enough, but it might not dissolve fast enough to keep KH and pH up as high as you'd like for africans.
I use epsom salts to bring up GH and a combination of baking soda and Aragamilk (a liquid carbonate solution) to bring up pH. You most likely will have to experiment with proportions to reach the GH, KH and pH you desire, but my water is similar to yours and I mix one bag of epsom salts (I forget the weight, but it's about the same size as a bag of flour) and two or three boxes of baking soda together. Once mixed, I add about a tablespoon per ten gallons of water. I also add about a tablespoon of Aragamilk per 40 gallons of new water. This gives me water that is very high in GH (around 400ppm) and KH (about 260 ppm) and has a pH of about 8.0.
If you try this route, be sure to experiment with adding these to water that's been sitting at room temperature for several hours, to allow any dissolved gases (like CO2) that might affect pH to offgas.
Good luck and have fun!
Jim