Water Hardness

Use your tap water as is, Your fish will be fine. Don't let the pH myths mess with head and you'll be fine as well.

As RTR said unless you wish to breed fish sensative to Calcium and Magnesium, your tap is fine.

Dave
 
carriebourdeau said:
I guess I was thinking the tap water was no good because I started with that and the PH is 8.4 (at least) <-- 8.4 is the highest measure on the test dip strip.
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Would be a good idea to get this verified by a liquid kit (your lfs should be able to do it), some strip tests are grossly innacurate.
 
:confused: Should I try this myself and do the test? If so, what brand?? :hang:

Sometimes I think the lfs is unreliable. The one nearest my work has dorky high schoolers working there who would rather talk about their day off than sell you a fish.

The other lfs that seems more indepth (as far as products go) seems to have more than their fair share of dead fish displayed in their tanks. I guess I'm "ye of little faith" in my lfs!!

I think I could read the direcitons and perform testing, I'm not 13 or anything (no offense to anyone reading this who may be a very mature 13 year old!) :girl:

Thanks friends!
 
Pretty much any common brand should be fine as long as they use liquid reagents. I generally recommend Aquarium Pharmaceuticals kits because they give you good value for your money and have easy to follow instructions. If you haven't got a basic set of kits (PH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate) a master kit such as this is great value and covers the essentials.

http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=19383;category_id=3111;pcid1=3233;pcid2=

Plus a GH/KH kit like this one might be handy too.

http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=19377;category_id=3239;pcid1=3233;pcid2=
 
Thanks! I'm gonna get that test kit.

I think the 5-in1 test strips aren't that accurate. Sometimes, it seems like the color result I get doesn't exactly match any of the colors on the bottle!

Tell me this, if you had a 10 gal - would you do small water changes more frequently (like 2x per week)??? I'd really like to master this 10 gal tank - - especially without torturing any more fish. This process is starting to keep me up at night! :coffee:
 
Tell me this, if you had a 10 gal - would you do small water changes more frequently (like 2x per week)??? I'd really like to master this 10 gal tank - - especially without torturing any more fish. This process is starting to keep me up at night!
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You are worrying too much if you are losing sleep. @ times partials per week certainly won't hurt anything, and a 10g isn't difficult to do partials on. I tend to set my partials based on nitrate levels. I start with roughly 50% weekly, and see if the nitrate goes creeps up or goes down over the course of several weeks. If it creeps up, I either increase frequency or increase water change volume until I find a routine that will keep things staedy long term. If they stay low or steadily drop then you could feasably do less until the steady long term routine is found. In most cases you can;t have a tank too clean so I continue with a minuimum 50% partial weekly. Just my method, nothing more.

The nice thing about having a really clean tank is the fact that if something goes awry in your schedule and you miss a partial, it isn't detrimental. This isn't an easy excuse to get lazy, but life happens and we all have to break from routine at some point.

Dave
 
FishingAgain said:
I just did a search on the net and here is an excerpt from an artice I found at http://www.cs.duke.edu/~narten/faq/chemistry.html


General hardness (GH) refers to the dissolved concentration of magnesium and calcium ions. When fish are said to prefer "soft" or "hard" water, it is GH (not KH) that is being referred to.
Note: GH, KH and pH form the Bermuda's Triangle of water chemistry. Although the three properties are distinct, they all interact with each other to varying degrees, making it difficult to adjust one without impacting the other. That is one reason why beginning aquarists are advised NOT to tamper with these parameters unless absolutely necessary. As an example, "hard" water frequently often comes from limestone aquifers. Limestone contains calcium carbonate, which when dissolved in water increases both the GH (from calcium) and KH (from carbonate) components. Increasing the KH component also usually increases pH as well. Conceptually, the KH acts as a "sponge" absorbing the acid present in the water, raising the water's pH.
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Thank you for this! I have read all this before, but somehow it just clicked... I mean the realationship between KH and PH... when I read your explanation. I had always been concerned about the hardness of my water in the past, given that we have well water and my LSF does not. The city water is not hard, and has low PH and KH... people there acctually have to work to avoid PH drops ;) So I wasn't paying too much attention to the KH, because the tst kit said that mine was "ideal". I never really understood the meaning of the words.."measure of general alkalinity". I gues I just thought it was another measure of hardness, given that it is also listed as hardness on the test . But now I get it... it's buffers! Duh... Thank You very much.

PS I quoted you on my High PH problem email on the general list.
 
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