Complete Newb Question

[osiris]

ok, im not a newb, have been keeping fish for a couple of years but wat is kh and dh? i test my water for everything else but my local fish shop has no kh or dh testers so ive never seen them or knew what they were.

 

[drobbyb]

ok, im not a newb, have been keeping fish for a couple of years but wat is kh and dh? i test my water for everything else but my local fish shop has no kh or dh testers so ive never seen them or knew what they were.

KH refers to carbonate hardness and GH is general or total hardness. In most cases it isn't adviseable to mess with the water trying to correct a hardness issue.

 

[OldMan47]

My LFS also do not carry KH and GH test kits but when I thought my trouble might be due to hardness I found them available on line and not very expensive at that.

 

[petertr]

Where I live, we have extremely hard water - still, I've never known a fish I can't keep happily.


Although if I want then to breed (or at least try to), then I have to soften my water

 

[osiris]

Where I live, we have extremely hard water - still, I've never known a fish I can't keep happily.


Although if I want then to breed (or at least try to), then I have to soften my water

Same here, how do you lower your GH? i use crushed granite or sometimes sand but its not very common at my LFC

 

[petertr]

Where I live, we have extremely hard water - still, I've never known a fish I can't keep happily.


Although if I want then to breed (or at least try to), then I have to soften my water

Same here, how do you lower your GH? i use crushed granite or sometimes sand but its not very common at my LFC

I have a RO Unit comining in the post.

The fish seem happy, but Id love to see them breed.

 

[OldMan47]

If I actually want to lower my GH I mix in some RO for my water changes. Like anything else, there can be too much of a good thing. To do it effectively you would need to know the water hardness of your tap, the residual hardness after the RO (it isn't 100% at removing things) and your target water hardness. Next step would be a trial blend in a bucket and make sure your ratio works the way you thought. Finally you could start moving in that direction with your water changes by using your target blend. After just a few 30% changes, the tank would be getting close to target values. The hard part is deciding correctly that you need to change anything and then maintaining it consistently.

 

[agutt]

a more detailed description of KH/GH...

KH as stated in an above post is carbonate hardness. It is important in your tanks because a KH reading that is too low (less than 3) can lead to pH swings/crashes that are bad for fish.

GH as stated in an above post as well is total hardness of your water and it is generally a measure of total dissolved solids.

It is best not to really mess with LOWERING any of these two levels by using chemicals. If you need to raise them for KH I would use some baking soda and for GH I would use some crushed coral either below your substrate or in a filter bag in your filter. As the coral slowly dissolves it will raise the GH. The Reverse Osmosis technique above would be a much better option for lowering these numbers as RO water has KH/GH readings of 0. IMO most fish will do fine in any water conditions unless they are encountering large swings. Most of the time fighting your water is much worse for your fish than getting "optimal" water conditions. As long as you acclimate the fish properly which you can find out how to do on some of the pinned threads you should have no problems.

Note - If you want to breed fish, then water conditions are very important and you may want to find a better water source or use RO and then add KH/GH to it.