My water comes out of the tap extremely soft, GH and KH of 0. I have been adding equilibrium to bring my GH to 4 and baking soda to bring the KH to 6. I heard i can add calcium carbonate and epsom salt to effectively do the same thing and much cheaper. My question is how much of both do i need to add. I have a 46 gal. bowfront w/110watts of cf lighting. And i add micro and macro's. so i just want to try and save a little cash if i can. thanks in advance.
Help From The Experts
- Thread starter poormanisme
- Start date
I like crushed coral (calcium carbonate) instead of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). Not terribly expensive (one bag should do you for life), very stable, longlasting, low maintenance. And unlike baking soda, crushed coral will also provide calcium.
Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, so it'll add the magnesium component of GH but not the calcium (see calcium carbonate
).
The two together will take care of increasing all three hardness components: carbonates (KH) and magnesium and calcium (GH), but Equilibrium is also providing Potassium (see also NuSalt) and some Iron which is nice and it really isn't all that expensive. To each their own…
I went over to Chuck Gadd's Dosage Calculator and it looks like 1 teaspoon of Epsom salt will raise 46 gallons of water about 3ppm. He recommends between 5 and 10 ppm which is less than a degree, but you've also got the calcium to account for. Tom Barr recommends keeping between 2 and 8 dGH in this handy article on levels.
Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, so it'll add the magnesium component of GH but not the calcium (see calcium carbonate
). The two together will take care of increasing all three hardness components: carbonates (KH) and magnesium and calcium (GH), but Equilibrium is also providing Potassium (see also NuSalt) and some Iron which is nice and it really isn't all that expensive. To each their own…
I went over to Chuck Gadd's Dosage Calculator and it looks like 1 teaspoon of Epsom salt will raise 46 gallons of water about 3ppm. He recommends between 5 and 10 ppm which is less than a degree, but you've also got the calcium to account for. Tom Barr recommends keeping between 2 and 8 dGH in this handy article on levels.