I bought some test strips from petco and it is saying my PH is ideal and amonia is fine but the water is "hard" and to add a Buffer.. What is that?
Water problem
- Thread starter AndrewMack
- Start date
Test strips are not accurate. Try a liquid test kit. Don't add a buffer, it will mess up your water and cause your fish stress. As long as it stays constant they should be fine.
Please do not add any chemicals to your water to adjust your PH. That will just cause more problems down the road because your PH will fluctuate too much and this will be harmful to your fish. Unless your PH is insanely high just work with the PH that you have.
Marinemom
Marinemom
I just spent 35 dollars on a master test kit and they arent accurate? well that sucks.I dont have any fish in my tank yet. I set it up and put a tiger barb and a goldfish in it and they died. goldfish died within 5min of aclimation. and the tiger barb died over night........ and I already bought PH up and down, Buffer up and stuff to make my tap water chlorine free
AndrewMack said:
are these test strips? there is also a master test kit that uses reagents(drips in a test tube).
what is ideal pH??
I would stay away from chemicals that raise or lower pH.
yes I bought a master Test Strip kit. This is what I bought. http://www.petsr4u.com/proddetail.asp?prod=44038400 Im doing a Cichlid/jack dempsey and Angel fish tank.Starting with the Angelfish so they can get big before adding the cichlid. Hoping not to have a problem :shark:
Yeah, get rid of those. As stated before, PH is only a problem if it is changing all the time. A constant PH either high or low is better then it shifting all the time.
well im going to have to keep these untill they are gone. I cant afford another 30 bucks. Well what about the water hardness and the alkalinity?
and also the guy at the store was trying to tell me that a 300gph powerhead with my undergravel filter was not enough filtration or water movement. And said I needed to buy a biowheel that was 60 bucks. Is that true or do I have sufficient filtration? And for some reason my tank look "yellow" but I have a lbue backround with red gravel. Someone said it might be my lighting. I was going to buy a new flurecosent(sp) fixture from walmart and see if that works. with some 5-10k bulb
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You can't take the strips back?
How big is your tank? You want to have a flow rate 10x greater than the size of your aquarium. So for 20 gallons you would want 200 GPH, and so on.
And just so you know, with a UGF, you are going to have pretty high nitrates, and will need to change water just a little more often than if you had the bio wheel filter. UGFs work OK, but that's just a drawback that they have.
How big is your tank? You want to have a flow rate 10x greater than the size of your aquarium. So for 20 gallons you would want 200 GPH, and so on.
And just so you know, with a UGF, you are going to have pretty high nitrates, and will need to change water just a little more often than if you had the bio wheel filter. UGFs work OK, but that's just a drawback that they have.